onethreethirteen – Chapter 10

 

 

Chapter 10

SUSAN! SUSAN! Susan if you don’t get up right now, you’re going to be late for school.  SUSAN! Get Up! GET UP NOW! But instead of heeding her mother’s voice, Susan snuggled deeper into her bed. Yesterday was laundry day and her bed was dressed in freshly laundered sheets that smelled of Gain Detergent and California salt sea air.  A childlike expression of satisfaction crossed her face.

 “S – u – s – a – n!    S – u – s – a – n!”  Susan groaned and rolled over onto her side without ever opening her eyes.  She was hovering between that shadowy place of not quite awake and not fully asleep.   “S – u – s – a – n!    S – u – s – a – n!

For what seemed the umpteenth time that night, Susan Madison was awakened by the sound of her mother’s voice. But this time, her mother’s voice was different. This time, if only for a moment, Susan thought she heard, not the voice of the elderly woman calling from the heavily rose scented room, nor was it the whimsical voice of the disillusioned housewife recounting tales of her youth. No. It was a voice she had not heard for many years. The voice that called her this time was that of the mother who had baked chocolate chips cookies from scratch, who had taught her to ride a bike, who had hand-washed her Catholic school uniforms, and the one who had insisted that she act like a lady. It was the voice of her mother when she was eight.  “Susan! I’m your mother, and I’m ordering you to get up NOW!”

Instantly, she recognized the sharp tone in her mother’s voice. That tone had always meant that her mother had reached the end of her patience. But more importantly, it meant that she had reached the end of her leash and was being snapped back from whatever foolishness she was engaging in at the time.

Immediately, she jumped to her feet with every intention of running somewhere – anywhere to escape what was sure to be a spanking or a strong tug on a tender ear. She blinked several times trying to adjust her vision to the eerie red darkness of the room. For a few seconds, she was lost, not knowing where she was or even when she was. “Oh God,” screamed Susan as a brilliant white light flooded the room in every direction. With the light came the sound of a thousand horses thundering through the fields outside. The floor of the old farm house was shaking so violently, she was having difficulty keeping her balance. And the roar from outside was deafening. An as suddenly as it had begun, the light, the noise, and the shaking were gone.

She stood in the middle of the room trying to understand what had just happened. “Earthquake?”  “No,” she thought shaking her head. “Too much light.”

“Susan.” Her mother’s voice was a mere whisper. But it was enough to snap her into action. Running towards her mother’s bedroom, she found that her mother was laying half on and half off the bed, gasping for air.

She went directly to her mother’s aid, gently lifting the ailing woman back into the bed.   “No time.  No Time.”  Her mother whispered in that now familiar raspy voice as Susan worked adjusting the antique blue and white wedding band quilt that covered her mother’s frail body.  There was a new found strength in her mother’s hands, Susan noted, as she re-tucked areas of the quilt where her mother had pulled them free.  “No time.  No time.” Her mother kept repeating.  Her vibrant blue eyes now a pale blue gray because of the cataracts pleaded with Susan to listen.   Puzzled by her mother’s mumblings and a little terrified by whatever had caused the bright light and the shaking, she decided it might be best if she slept in the chair beside her mother’s bed rather than return to her makeshift bed in the dining room.

After struggling for some time to get her mother securely tucked in, Susan reached for a moist towelette, from among the bottles, tubes, and needles that cluttered the bedside table, with the intent of wiping away a trail of drool that had collected at the corner of her mother’s mouth.  She had the towelette just inches from her mother’s face when the look in her mother’s eyes changed.  A chill ran through her.  “You listen to me,” said the voice she thought she’d heard earlier.  “High on the back wall of the pantry is a button.  Push it.  And the wall will open.  You’ll be safe in there.  You mustn’t waste another minute.  We’ve launched ours.  They’ll have the coordinates of this place in no time and will most likely launch a counter-strike.”  Susan’s attention was riveted on her mother as if her mother had suddenly started babbling some incoherent foreign language.   “Mom what are you talking about.  Launched ours?”  She was vigorously shaking her head no and trying to calm her mother when the house began shaking and once again a bright white light illuminated the whole place.   “Susan, you must go now.  Quickly, you’ll need to get some fresh water.  Everything else is already in the basement.  Jim knows about it.  He’ll look for you there.  Susan go.”   “Go where and not without you.”  “There isn’t enough time for you to get me downstairs by yourself.  You have to go.”  “No!  I can’t believe this is happening!  There’s got to be another explanation!”  Anger and rage filled her —  confused her.  She rushed to the bedroom window just in time to see the departing missile’s fiery white tail arc across the night sky.  

“Mother how could you.  Why did you let them put those damn things on the property?”  Her mother’s eyes became gray steel.  “Your father’s medical bills.  The Veterans Administration took care of most of it but not all.  The bank was going to take the place if I didn’t pay up.”   “You didn’t have to do this.  We would have given you the money,” screamed Susan.  “And put you and Jim at odds with one another.  No.  I couldn’t do that!”  “But you could do this!”  “I never for a moment, Susan, believed that this would happen,” sobbed her mother.  “Well it has!   Oh, my God, Mom, Danny! Oh, God my son.  My son is out there.  I have to warn him.”   Frantic with fear, she raced for the phone that was buried in the beside clutter.  She lifted the receiver to her ear.  No dial tone.  “Oh God. Oh God.”  “Susan, darling I’m so sorry.  But you must go now!”  She was about to protest that she was not going anywhere when she felt herself being pushed forward and lifted up.  Time seemed to slow down and seconds crawled like minutes.  She could see herself flying high over her mother’s bed with bits of glass and wood swirling in the air around her.  There was no sound.  None at all.  Not until she hit the facing wall and she heard her own breath being knocked from her lungs.  And the sound of her mother’s voice. 

‘S – U – S – A – N!”       

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onethreethirteen – Chapter 7

Chapter 7

THE ‘WAR ROOM’ looked exactly like Madison feared it might – empty.

Together he and the Staff Sergeant got things going. The Staff Sergeant started up the central computer that linked Andrew’s computer system to the ones at the Pentagon. While the Staff Sergeant worked on the uplink to the Pentagon, Madison worked on getting an up-link to NORAD’s main satellite which he then linked to the ‘War Room’s world-wide status map. When the huge screens, that were the room’s main focus, lit up neither Madison nor Washington could believe what they were seeing.

US bases around the world were shown in blue. Invading forces in red.

Madison took two steps back from the huge screen, hoping it would transpose things on the map. “Are you sure you have those colors right?” quipped Lucinda.

“They’re right enough,” said Madison, looking over his shoulder at the slender woman standing with her legs astride and hands on her hips. He noted that her hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her caramel colored skin glowed pinkish red indicating a rising level of frustration. Pretty soon she’d be in full combat mode. He hadn’t known her long but already he felt confident with her having his back.

“There’s got to be something wrong with this,” said Lucinda, and ran over to the screen’s computer interface and began pushing buttons trying in vain to recalibrate the information on the screen.

The huge screen shuddered and went blank. For a few seconds she and Madison had hope. But when the screen came back on-line, casting an eerie pinkish-blue glow throughout the room, hope turned to resolve.

Every blue dot on the screen was ringed by a circle of red. From the War Room, Madison began issuing orders.

He ordered the men and women upstairs to take further security measures in an effort to hold off the full scale assault he knew was coming. He ordered everyone except combat seasoned soldiers into one area. The soldiers who had combat experience he stationed on the ground level by as many entrances as he could. The other entrances were locked and barricaded with office furniture. Windows were blacked out and stairwells were booby-trapped. Cameras showing any view of the outside were destroyed. Madison knew the enemy would use the wives, lovers, and friends of the people inside Central Command as a weapon to gain entry.

Madison ordered every piece of paper shredded then burned and every hard drive wiped clean. What the enemy didn’t already know they weren’t going to learn on his watch.

Only two computers in the building were left operating — one for transmissions between the Pentagon and Andrews, and the other for transmissions between Andrews and NORAD. All there work had been a wasted effort since they’d been unable to contact anyone from those two stations. After an hour of trying Madison knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He had to act. They could hear heavy shelling going on outside. Gunfire was increasing and the shelling was getting closer. Surrender in his case was not option.

Madison very quietly took stock of the situation and realized there were two things he had to do and from the sound of the gunfire outside, he had to do them quickly. First, thing was destroy ‘Angel.’ ‘Angel was the code name for Air Force One. The thought of a foreign power parading her around as their war trophy was unfathomable. The plane had to go.

Standing up to his full height, he turned in the direction of where Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington sat and simply asked. “Are you a religious person, Sergeant?” “Begging your pardon, sir?” “Are you a religious person, Sergeant?” For the first time that night, Lucinda’s heart fluttered with fear. “Yes. Yes, sir. I am.” “Good. Then you should pray, Sergeant. Cause we’re going to blow up Air Force One and we have to get me off this base by whatever means necessary!”

Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington put up a howl of protest. “You can’t just go around blowing up the President’s plane. For God’s sake, we don’t know who we’re fighting. We don’t even know if this is for real. This could very well be some sort of drill.” “A drill with live rounds where we kill people. I don’t think so Sergeant and neither did your Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton.” “I still say we need more information.” “Sergeant, whatever actions I have us take, the responsibility for it will fall on me, not you. I can tell you for certain that whoever these people are, they’ve managed to capture a major portion of this base and if we don’t do something fast to stop them or at the very least, slow them down, they’re going to capture the rest of it. And that includes the portion that contains ‘Angel’. Am I clear?” “Yes sir! But, Colonel Sir, no one else around here is going near that plane. You’re the only one here who’d have guts enough to pull something like that.” Madison thought for a second. It was time to reveal a truth about himself that only a few people on the face of the earth knew. A secret so dire that he’d sworn an oath never to reveal it. “I can’t go Staff Sergeant. All the enemy needs is to capture both me an ‘Angel’. He looked the Staff Sergeant squarely in the face and said as matter-of-factly as he could manage, “I’m carrying the Football.” It means that I’m … “I know what it means, she said cutting him off. You’re the guy with the ‘Doomsday Launch Codes.”

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onethreethirteen – Chapter 6

 

Chapter 6

“Pull out your sword and slay any one, that says Pashtun and Afghan are not one! Arabs know this and so do Romans: Afghans are Pashtuns, Pashtuns are Afghans!”  Khushal Khan Khattak

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

Madihah (Jennifer), and her three compatriots, Faatima (Amanda), Parvin (Patricia), and Saabira (Stephanie) were posing, not for pictures, mind you, but as that rare phenomenon that few military men ever admit exist. They were posing as military groupies.

The members of The Ulema had personally picked them for the task. With skin as fair as any Westerner’s and blessed with the natural ability to speak not just English but English with a dialect, they easily passed for Americans.

At the moment, they sere sitting in a corner booth of the Black Rooster Pub on ‘L’ Street waiting for their targets. One Kyle Morton, Juan Munoz, Richard Gills, and Anthony Brown.

Kyle Morton, Senior Airman and Juan Munoz, Airman 1^st Class were assigned to Check Point F. While Richard Gills, Senior Airman and Anthony Brown Airman 1^st Class were assigned to Check Point E.

Kyle Morton was as his name implied, a fair haired Nebraskan of Czech descent.

Juan Munoz a Hispanic inner city kid from New York had hands that could disassemble and reassemble a M9 in a matter of minutes.

Richard Gills, their leader, was an ‘honored’ member of the Air Base Ground Defense and as such was the only one of the four who had been deployed in a combat situation. He’d served in the Gulf War.

An ‘old man’ at thirty, Richard Gills had a wife and two young kids waiting for him at home but went for drinks at the Black Rooster with his guys to maintain camaraderie. He knew guys loosened up a bit more after a few drinks and that made it easier to flush out any little problems in the group before they became big problems.

Anthony Brown, a young black man and recent graduate of the US Air Force Security Forces Academy, was the only one of the four who had grown up in the area. He and his family had once owned a two story house in the Anacostia area. But with more and more politicians moving in, the cost of living had sky-rocketed. The city had bought their house and all the others on the block where Anthony grew up and demolished them within a week’s time and months later turned the area into a high-priced shopping mall.

 The girls were conversing amongst themselves in English never allowing themselves the luxury of slipping back into their native tongue of Farsi. It was imperative that no one know their true identities or their country of origin. That had been made very clear. It had been drilled into them that this was possibly a one-way mission if they were caught. Their mission was to find a way to breech Andrews Air Force Base security at Check Points E and F. Anything and everything they had to do in order to carry it out that mission would be forgiven by Allah. They’d wear a martyr’s crown and their names revered forever.

Parvin, a curvy blue eyed blonde born among the lush rich farmlands of northern Takhar knew that Madihah loved making a game out of everything was the first to pick from the photographs on the table.

Each woman had been given a profile of the man she was specifically redesigned to seduce, but none of them had ever seen an actual picture of the men until now. Madihah was making very sure that the girls had studied their profiles and were ready.

The next to pick was redheaded amber eyed, Saabira of Kandahar. Wearing a pair of L’Agence skinny jeans and a rusty red printed top by Dolce and Gabbana with her fiery hair smelling of Opium, she was as sultry and as spicy as the city of her birth.

Ravine hair dark eyed Faatima whose family home was bulldozed over to make way for the International Assistance Force Base in Chaghcharan reached out a hand with French manicured nails and took one of the last two remaining photographs. As she did so, her diamond tennis cast a rainbow hue across the ceiling of the Black Rooster Pub.

Madihah from the city of Herat in the Province of Herat picked up the last remaining photograph. Looking at each of the women seated in the booth said, well done!

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onethreethirteen – Chapter 5

 Chapter 5

LIEUTENANT COLONEL BILLY HAMILITON, Watch Commander for the night, ordered the men and women under his command to remain at their posts. He then went into the Base Commander’s office, took out his Air Force issued service revolver, put it to his right temple, and pulled the trigger.

Stunned workers rushed to the door to see what had happened. Unfortunately, Madison chose that particular moment to kick open the door. “What the hell are you people doing just standing around? Don’t you know what’s happening out there.” Madison’s fury resounded in every word. His tone becoming more and more malevolent. “We, an by ‘we’, I mean this Base is under attack! Has anyone notified Washington?

These people, he thought, were as helpful as cardboard cutouts. Damit! Where’s the Watch Commander?”

As a furious Madison stood in the middle of the room breathing fire, the group of stunned Central Command workers parted slowly revealing a path to the Base Commanders office where Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington stood with a drawn service revolver.

Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington, a small-town girl from Fairhope, Alabama, who had enlisted in the Air Force at the age of eighteen in order to help support her family of twelve siblings, wasted no time in assuring the tall muscled intruder that they were well aware of the circumstances.

“I can assure you, whoever you are, Lucinda said arching her right eyebrow, that we have a handle on what’s happening outside this office.” Leveling the gun at a point directly in line with Madison’s heart, she demanded, “name, rank, and serial number. And then you can ask questions once we verify who you are.”

Madison already extremely agitated at having left Officer’s Row without engaging the enemy, was at his boiling point by now. And the way this staff sergeant was addressing him wasn’t helping matters one bit. The lack of respect in her voice was being duly noted.

Madison took a step forward as a challenge, to the young female Staff Sergeant, and a glop of mud fell to the floor with a loud plop. Lucinda’s finger tightened around the gun’s trigger. Sally Arnold, a close friend of Lucinda’s sucked in her breath and held it. She knew Lucinda was quite capable of pulling the trigger.

Madison looked deep into the eyes of the Black woman holding the gun. Sized her up in a few seconds, noting how she held her body and the gun. He then took into account that the Staff Sergeant had no way of knowing who he was since he was shirtless and covered in mud. Standing his ground, he answered her in a much calmer tone than he was feeling – Colonel Jim Madison, 161^st Airborne Brigade, serial number, 9892234561.

With her left hand, Lucinda motioned for Buck Sergeant Tim Shaffer to input Madison’s information into Andrew’s centralized database and run a check on the muddy mess of a man standing in front of her.

The entire room stood by in tense anticipation, waiting for the results. Neither Madison nor Lucinda broke eye contact. Not even when the printer started spitting out the results of its search on one Colonel Jim Madison. “It’s OK, Lucinda, yelled the Sergeant. He is who he says he is. He’s one of us!

Doing his best to keep his temper in check, Madison moved a couple of paces closer to the Staff Sergeant, and asked through clenched teeth, “Sergeant, what is your status?” “Sir, I believe Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, tonight’s Watch Commander, has just committed suicide in General Thomas’ office, Sir.” Madison let out a quiet, ‘Shi!”

Pointing to one of the scared faces standing behind Lucinda, he said, “You. What’s your name?” Airman Billy Towers, sir.” “Well, Airman Billy Towers, you take one other person and the two of you check on Lt. Colonel Hamilton. Shaffer, you try and raise Washington and let them know what’s going on here. The rest of you, back to your posts. And for God’s sake, take off those dame name tags and insignias,” he emphasized by tapping Lucinda’s name tag with his forefinger. “I don’t want the enemy knowing your names and ranks. “Sergeant! You’re with me.”

Lucinda holstered her service piece and began briefing Madison as they hurried down a long narrow hallway marked ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ to a secured elevator leading to the ‘War Room’ located under Central Command.

The news, he learned, was bad. Andrews had been caught completely off guard.

From preliminary reports and the information Lucinda provided, Madison was able to piece together what had happened.

At fifteen hundred hours three squadrons had departed for Washington in order to take part in the newly elected president’s parade. This he already knew because he’d taken part in the ceremony celebrating the squadron’s participation. With the departure of the three squadrons, the base had gone on ‘stand down.

At twenty-one hundred hours (nine p.m.) Lt. Colonel Hamilton had received a dispatch from Britain’s Prime Minister requesting air support for the RAF, which the dispatch said was under heavy assault.

Lucinda had watched as Hamilton had signed off on the dispatch noting that ‘Nervous Nelson’ strikes again. Even going so far as to draw a small quivering ghost figure at the bottom of the memorandum. It was his way of getting across, without putting it in writing, what everyone already knew — that Prime Minister William Nelson was a bit of a nervous Nelly. Having had the US scramble fighters to England on the slightest threat. Elected after David Cameron’s assassination, Nelson was a very jittery man in part because of the increasing number of terrorists’ attacks on London in the past few months.

Hamilton, no doubt, dismissed the dispatch, because there had been so many dispatches of late, all of them false alarms.

At twenty-two hundred hours (ten p.m.) Hamilton had received notice that the USS Carrier Nimitz, patrolling the waters off the English Channel, had come under attack.

Madison wondered what he, himself, would have done right about then, if he had been in Hamilton’s shoes. Hamilton had ordered a yellow alert knowing that the USS Nimitz, with her heavy guns, fighter planes, and surface to air missiles, was well equipped to take care of herself.

Failing to see the forest for the trees, so to speak, Hamilton had chosen not to wake General Thomas, expecting that the Nimitz would stamp out any attack in short order. Instead of scrambling Andrew’s forces, he had printed out the transmissions and had Lucinda place them on General Thomas’ desk for review in the morning.

The final straw occurred at twenty three hundred hours (eleven p.m.) when Check Points E and F — the two check points that guarded entrance to the base’s military housing areas had not checked in as scheduled.

Hamilton at least had the presence of mind to send out two MP’s to see whether the guards were asleep on duty or otherwise engaged.

At twenty-three fifty when the MP had not reported back and Check Points E and F were still silent, Hamilton had Lucinda and her staff start calling Andrews’ other Check Points. When neither Check Point G or A responded to Lucinda’s call Hamilton sent out a second set of MPs. He then had her call General Thomas’ secured line. No response. That’s when, according to Lucinda, Hamilton broke into a cold sweat panic. “Recheck his schedule and call him again.” “We should bring the base up to a Level Three Red Alert, Lucinda prodded him.” “No, not yet. If nothing is wrong out there, it’ll be my ass.” “I think something’s wrong. According to the General’s schedule, he was planning on spending the night at home with his wife preparing for the flight to Washington tomorrow for the Inauguration.” “Call him again, this time if he doesn’t answer, send a group of MP’s to his house and have them pound on the door until he does.”

At twenty-four hundred hours, all hell broke out on the Base.

 

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onethreethirteen – Chapter 4

Chapter 4

COLONEL JIM MADISON OF THE 161^st Airborne Brigade zigzagged his way across the darken airfield under a hail of gunfire, towards the B-52 bomber touching down on the runway in front of him.

As he ran, he heard the unmistakable hiss of a bullet as it sailed passed him and ricocheted off the bomber’s landing gear. He tucked and rolled and then jumped immediately to his feet and hauled ass for the bomber once again.

His face contorted with pain as his legs pumped harder than they’d ever done before. Not even four hours earlier, when he’d run for his life from his own home. More than his life was at stake now. It was millions of lives all over America. He had to make that plane.

The bomber would touch down just long enough for him to hurl his forty-eight year old six foot two body on-board. He had one shot at this and only one.

Andrews Air Force Base had been under an intense assault for the past four hours. The Reconnaissance teams he’d sent out had been unable to discover precisely who it was shooting at them. But whoever they were, they were well equipped and well trained. And from what he’d observed, the unidentified intruders knew the exact layout of the base. As a military man, he had to hand it to them, they’d done their homework, well. A little too, well for his comfort. An operation this well planned and carried out hinted at a traitor. For these intruders knew who and where to attack. Owning to the fact that they’d sought out and simultaneously attacked the homes of the base’s commanding officers before staging any attacks on the rank and file.

He, himself, had been awaken by the sound of breaking glass coming from somewhere downstairs in his home.

The small Georgian style house he shared with his wife and son was located at the end of Officer’s Row, and sat kiddy-corner from that of the base commander’s.

Thankfully, no one else was in the house. Both Susan and Danny were away. Susan was visiting her mother and Danny was camping, with friends, in the Arizona desert near Great Basin National Park.

He’d lain motionless in the king-sized bed, holding his breath, trying to make sure he’d actually heard the sound of breaking glass. Or had he dreamed it? Though he’d never be able to explain it, he knew someone dangerous was in his house.

Stealthfuly, he eased his body from the bed and grabbed his Glock semi-automatic from the nightstand drawer, shoved in a full clip, and started for the bedroom door. Creeping through the narrow darkened upstairs hallway, keeping his back to the wall, he reassured himself that it was most likely a drunken soldier who had mistook the house for his own or worse a soldier turned burglar.

At the top of the stairs, he peered over the railing and watched as the intruders, dressed in state-of-the-art camouflage gear with night scopes fanned out in a standard search pattern. These were no ordinary burglars, intent on a laptop or iPod. These guys were definitely military.

Realizing he was outnumbered and outgunned, he quietly, returned to his bedroom, locking the door behind him. He estimated that he had about two, maybe three, minutes before they started up the stairs, less if he were careless.

Thinking quickly, he grabbed only what he needed of the things that lay within his path of escape. Since Susan had not been home to scold him, he’d not taken off either his boots or his coat before coming upstairs. Boots, pants, shirt, and coat all lay in a heap at the foot of the bed.

Moving carefully, avoiding every loose floorboard, he crept his way over to one of the bedroom’s two east-flanking windows. “Thank God, Susan, wasn’t the fru-fru type, he thought. Having to claw his way through miles of decorative window fabric would only have slowed him down.

Sucking in a deep breath, he prayed a silent prayer that the window would slide open without making too much noise. He had one leg through the window when he heard the fourth step from the bottom of the stairs moan ever so slightly under the weight of one of the intruders. Susan had prodded him several times during the last year to get that damn step fixed. Somehow, he never found the time.

Stepping out onto the roof, he noted the stars were shining brightly. Too brightly! Lights were out all over the base. From his perch atop the roof, he could see yet another set of men, dressed in camouflage gear, entering the base commander’s house. Moments later, gunfire erupted. “Shit, Madison cursed under his breath, this is no God damn drill.”

He rolled off the roof and hit the ground running. He had a destination in mind. A place where the intruders probably would not think of looking for someone of his rank.

“What the hell is going on, he thought to himself. Bare-chested and shivering in the cold night air, he could hear the steady pop pop pop of automatic weapons fire coming from houses up and down Officer’s Row. Now and then, a woman’s scream pierced the night air. “Damn it! This can’t be happening. Not here! Not on US soil! Pushing down his fear, he knew he had to get some answers. Find out who, what, when, and why. And had anyone else made it out of Officer’s Row alive?

Having served on the base for seven years, he knew he’d find answers to all of those questions in one place, Central Command. But first, he had to get there.

About three clicks in back of his house was a small park where the officer’s young children often played. He knew it well. It was where Susan went to grieve. Ironic, he thought, that she should choose to grieve amidst the very thing she craved but could not have. It was no secret, between them, that Susan wanted more children and he didn’t. One was enough for him. Danny’s birth had been a difficult one. Complications from preeclampsia had almost cost Susan her life. Not one, but two specialists had advised against her becoming pregnant again. Besides, not wanting another child, he loved his wife and had no intention of putting her life at risk.

Now that Danny was busy with his own life, Susan seemingly found comfort here among the high-pitched wails and laughter of playing children.

Crawling on his belly through the park, he found a spot where he could pull himself together, get dressed, speculate on what was happening, and plan the one mile run to Central Command.

 

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onethreethirteen – Chapter 3

Chapter 3

SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY, I made my way down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Scenes from all the police dramas I’d watched over the course of a lifetime came flooding back supplying me with the necessary information to handle a situation like this. I should be bold, and brash like Kate of ‘Kate and Ally’ and agile and clever like Starsky of ‘Starsky and Hutch. But the truth of the matter was, “I was just damn scared.”

I knew to keep low with my back against the wall, checking behind me every few seconds. It wouldn’t help John one bit, if I allowed myself to be captured by the same intruder who had taken him hostage.

Ever so quietly, I made it safely downstairs only to be both stunned and horrified by what I saw. The front door of our house was standing wide open. “Oh God, where’s John? I thought. And why hadn’t he come back to our bedroom? Had he left me alone in the house with an armed intruder? Or had he, loveable idiot that he is, chased the intruder out of our home and down the street?”

As I stood there on the stairs, I knew I had a choice to make. Either I turn and high tail it back up the stairs to the relative safety of our bedroom or make a run for the open door knowing that at any step along the way some loathsome stranger could jump out of the shadows, grab me, and clamp his dirty fingers over my mouth to stop my cries for help. A little voice within me said, “Go for it!”

I took off in a flash for the door, my heart pounding and a scream on the edge of my lips. Once through the door, I came to an abrupt halt.

John and several of our neighbors were standing in the middle of the street, like statues, transfixed by something in the distance. All of them were holding flashlights pointed in the direction of whatever it was that held their gaze. The five seven foot tall Emerald green Arborvitaes that lined our front entryway blocked my view of what John and the others were staring at. I tried calling him but to no avail. That rumbling noise that I’d heard upstairs was even louder, and seemed closer, now that I was outside. I waived my hands over my head and screamed his name as loud as I possibly could. “J – o – h – n!”

He turned towards me and gave me such a pitiful look, that my heart sank instantly. I knew that look. He had that look when he was absolutely defeated. He had that look the night he’d come home and had to tell me that yet another business venture of his had failed. That look terrified me. Suddenly, I was more afraid of taking the next few steps, than I’d been crossing through the darken doorway. The next few steps would reveal what had everyone so transfixed. The next few steps would change everything. Again, I hesitated.

Being a cold January night, I had worn my flannel PJs, the ones with the playful, tumbling polar bears, to bed. Standing there like that, I suddenly realized I was freezing. I took a step back into the house and pulled my old faithful tan trench coat from the entryway closet and wrapped myself in it before going back outside.

For the first few steps, I kept my eyes locked on John. Curiosity, you know, the thing that killed the cat, got the better of me. I turned my head in the direction of everyone gaze. There illuminated against the dark night, were a trio of glowing mushroom clouds. My mouth dropped open from the shock. Clearly, they were what had caused the house to shake so violently and were, most likely, the source of that rumbling noise.

John came over to me and put his arms around me. As we stared into each other’s eyes, no words were necessary. We held each other for what seemed an eternity. But only mere seconds had ticked away on the clock.

In John’s eyes there was such sadness — such regret. He started to say “I’m sorry that I never ….. I pressed my lips against his in order to stop, the I’m sorries. “You don’t have to apologize to me. Even now, knowing what I know, I’d still marry you anyway.” We kissed again and held each other as we waited. There was no where to run.

That was the last thing I remember clearly. And then I was floating in that rolling, rumbling, screaming cloud. It had claimed us. I opened my mouth to scream, but dust clogged my throat and filled my lungs. My fingers were desperately reaching out in every direction searching for John or for anything that would secure me to the world I’d known only minutes earlier.

I was literally being ripped away from my warm comfortable suburban existence. Through the gray brown cloud that enveloped me, I could see the stars. How odd, I thought, to be rolling around in a dust and fragment filled cloud, looking up and seeing the brilliant white light of stars.

 https://onethreethirteen.wordpress.com

By
Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders
Jared Anderson
Dancing With The Fat Woman
Thou Shalt Eat Dust
STALKED! By Voices
https:24thehuntforrednovember.wordpress.com