The Final Day (After, #3)(57)
“That was Dunn in downtown Asheville. He said several Black Hawks have touched down near the county office complex. They’ll be in his office in another few minutes.”
“Any fighting?”
Black relayed the question, sighed, and looked back to John. “One of the security team there is shot, bad. Fired on them as they landed.”
John looked back out the window, helicopters still circling, and in spite of his orders, students were coming out of buildings, some already in winter camo, weapons up.
“John, what are you going to do?” Black whispered, still holding the phone.
He looked at his troops, his kids. Against the Posse, even against Fredericks, it was one thing, and those two fights had cost dearly. This time?
It would be a bloodbath, and for what?
“We don’t stand a chance against them.” John sighed. “I know Bob Scales. This is the A team, not those pathetic ANR kids they threw at us last spring.”
“John, I need your answer now.” It was Bob again on the radio. “I just got a report a couple of your people and mine were shot in Asheville. Stop it before it turns into a full-scale fight.”
He wanted to shout back that it was Bob who was starting it with this surprise assault coming in at dawn.
“John, they’ve got us,” Maury said softly, and John finally nodded.
“Reverend. Tell Dunn to stand down, disarm, and surrender. Get on the phone to all locations, tell them not to fire, to stand down, and await word from me later. Repeat, do not resist. You got it.”
Reverend Black sighed. “John, you’re making the right move.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied bitterly. “Maury, get outside, tell those darn kids to get back inside. Find Kevin Malady, tell him everyone is to return to their rooms, stack weapons, and show no resistance. Got that?”
Maury could only nod and went back out the door as John picked up the mike and clicked it.
“Okay, Bob. We surrender on your word that my people are to be treated with respect, no reprisals or arrests. It’s got to be the code we once lived by, sir.”
“Agreed.”
“Wait fifteen minutes so I make sure the word is out. There’s a baseball field above the campus; you can set down there.”
“Fifteen minutes, then. Bring your jeep up to meet me, John. Make sure your people do not fire. If they do, you know what I have to do in reply.”
“Understood.”
He could hear Bob click off.
I should have expected this, he thought bitterly. But then again, what could I do differently? After two and a half years of successfully managing the defense of his community, to be caught like this was galling.
Frustrated, he threw the mike down and walked outside.
*
The rotor of the Black Hawk came to a stop, John at last able to lower his hands from his face as the swirling snow settled down. Three Black Hawks had landed, troops piling out of the first two, weapons raised, forming a defensive perimeter, while overhead the three Apaches continued to circle. Their nose guns were turned away, outward, and not in toward the campus—a smart gesture on Bob’s part—but their presence was menacing nevertheless, the sounds, the sights, and smells taking John back to the desert of Iraq so long ago.
John stood by the jeep, Maury at his side. The world felt cold, empty. Could he trust Bob? Or was this all a ruse? He’d grown used to winning, to always somehow pulling the chestnuts out of the fire. And now after two and a half years, the game was up. Whatever it was that Bluemont wanted, they now had it. How brilliantly it was done, to send in a man John once served under, had trusted, respected, and considered to be his friend.
It was all up to Bluemont now. He had defied them because of Fredericks, the type of man who across his years of military service he had learned to hold in contempt. The quintessential bureaucrat, the type where in the face of all logical argument, at times with the lives of men in the balance, would smile that disdainful smile, implying that an Ivy League degree in public administration trumped reality in the field.
Was that what Bob was serving? If so, regardless of the promises made minutes ago, John could see what would follow. Local community control was finished, the high talk back in the spring of a reaffirmation of the Constitution, of their expanding out across the Carolinas, bringing at least some semblance of a technological infrastructure back online to themselves and their neighbors … gone.
There would be no fight now. Perhaps the first gesture to smooth things over would be a bribe of reassurance, some truckloads of MREs brought up from the coast, perhaps even already packed along with the column invading up from Greenville, South Carolina. Then? A new administrator? Another Fredericks? And with him new rulings? The logic that a local militia was no longer needed for self-defense now that the regulars were here, but the young men and women of his community would be needed elsewhere and an order given?
He could see it all so clearly, even as he felt a surge of emotion as the side door of the third Black Hawk slid open and Bob Scales alighted, behind him a detail of eight well-armed men, some in desert camo, others in winter uniforms, who joined the defensive perimeter.
John did not make the gesture of going forward to meet Bob, waiting as he struggled alone through the knee-deep snow, moving slowly.
Bob stopped half a dozen feet away from John and gazed into his eyes, saying nothing.