The Final Day (After, #3)(47)

“What the hell do you think?” Bob replied sharply. “An order to either arrest or kill a man I saw as a son, his children substitutes for grandchildren I would never have? Just what the hell do you think?”

“You know I won’t go with you.”

“I kind of assumed that.”

“So I guess this is at an end,” John said, coming to his feet. “It’s your call, Bob, and I’m leaving it to you. You asked me what Quentin had said. And as I just told you, by the time I reached his side, he was dead. But he did spill something beyond the fact that you were alive.” John paused. “At least what he rambled about to my friend Forrest and the nurse trying to save him. Like I said, the poor man was damn near dead when he was found and out of his head.”

“And he said what?”

“Something about another EMP.”

Bob stiffened and broke eye contact.

“Bob?”

“John, I’ll ask you one more time. Come back with me to Roanoke. We can talk further then. Bluemont wants you dead. If I’ve got you stashed away in a safe place, believe me, it’s for your own good.”

“Sir, I’m not going back with you, and if all was reversed, you’d say the same.”

“Yeah, I assumed it would be thus.”

“So, what’s next?” John asked. “You’re free to go. I won’t stop you, and you knew that before you even stepped foot off that chopper. You get your people back in, lift off, I tell my people to scatter, and in five minutes, you and I are personally at war. Is that it?”

Bob did not reply.

“Kind of like what we read happened at West Point a long time ago, when the superintendent was ordered to hold on charges of treason any cadet or faculty that would not renew the oath of allegiance to the Union. Instead, he told the secretary of war to go to hell and let his old friends and students—now enemies preparing to serve the Confederacy—leave without a fight. Is that it?”

Bob nodded. “I’ve served my country over forty-five years. If not for this current mess, I was about to retire out, settle down with Linda; she was already picking out a place down on Marco Island, and you know how it is. Old soldier writes a book or two, kills the boredom by fishing, and quietly grumbles how the country continues to go to hell but there is nothing he can do about it. And now, instead, I’m here, freezing my ass off.”

“Then why did you really come, Bob? Really? Your comment a few minutes back tells me that if I don’t go, you are most likely expected to lift off, and five minutes later, this place is toast. Is that what Bluemont expects?”

Bob did not reply.

“So why not do it?”

“In reply, John, I assume there are at least a few heavy weapons stashed in this hangar and you got extra personnel in a hangar next door to this one. You could hold me hostage and back out. Chances are if I’m taken prisoner, in spite of my orders to hit you even if I am being held, my people would hold back on a strike, allowing you to escape.”

John sighed, shook his head, and gestured for the general to sit back down by his side. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you, and unless this damn war has twisted you inside out, I know you won’t order a strike on me, at least not like this.”

“Oh, damn all this shit to hell,” Bob whispered, and with a weary groan, he returned to sit at John’s side. “It’s cold out here, so damn cold.”

“Yeah, I know.” John emptied the last of the thermos, most into Bob’s cup, the last few drops into his.

“What did they used to call it? A Mexican standoff or something like that, though I guess that became politically incorrect to say years ago.”

“Something like that. ‘Mutually assured destruction’ kind of fits better at the moment. Both of us die or both of us walk away.”

“Stupid, all of it.”

“You need not tell me, sir. So who ordered me dead?”

“Bluemont.”

“Again Bluemont. Can you give me a straight answer?”

“Maybe.”

“Just who the hell are they? They claim to be the legitimate government of the United States. Claim line of succession as defined in the Constitution. But who are they really?”

“They are the government, John. At least that’s something.”

“How did they survive?”

“By coincidence, on the day things went down, there was a simulation attack training exercise, with some people evacuated up to the FEMA fallback position, which was the Bluemont facility. You know the president went down while aboard Air Force One. Damn fools in charge had never hardened it to the current level of a high-yield EMP. Congress wasn’t in session, so nearly all those people were scattered around the country. Therefore, the survivors lucky enough to be at Bluemont were it.”

“You ever meet them or been there?”

Bob looked down at his coffee, swirling it around in his cup before drinking down the now-tepid brew. “No. I was bounced around after the Day, out west, briefly in Cheyenne Mountain—like I said, out on one of our surviving carriers that for a while served as a joint command center. Then took over assets coming back from the Middle East and the Far East that began to deploy out of what was left of Norfolk with orders cut several months ago to, as I already told you, reestablish control in the southeast. No, I’ve never been there. At least on the inside.”