Grace, carbine over her shoulder, ran up to him and saluted, face blackened from obviously having helped to fight the fire.
“Report. First off, any casualties?”
“Three dead, sir.” She started to choke up.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Focus, Lieutenant. Work with me. Who are they?”
She rattled off a few names, one of them an elderly professor who collapsed inside the chapel when it was hit and started to burn.
“Focus on now, Grace. That’s your job, remember? Focus and go back to it.”
“Sir, the command post down in the basement is still running. They asked for you to report in.”
His admonishment to his young lieutenant of the college troops now reflected back on him. Again that nagging doubt. Was it the concussion of a couple of weeks back, or was he indeed losing his edge? Of course, after being out of touch for at least forty-five minutes, he should get a situation report and plot his next move. This first strike was a softening up; by this time, a ground assault could have rolled over his outpost on the interstate and be heading straight into town.
“Keep at it, Grace. You guys are doing great.” He patted her on the shoulder and then returned her salute before running down to the basement entry, the window shattered.
His communications team was inside, and they looked up at him with relief as he came in. They had adroitly run their wires from a basement window through the trees and anchored them to the roof of the adjoining classroom building. Unless on the ground and staring straight up, no one could spot them—though if they transmitted out for more than a few seconds, an equipped unit could zero in on their location. Without Hellfire missiles, fuel-air explosives, or a large, high explosive, digging them out would be difficult, but it would certainly mean the ultimate destruction of his beloved chapel. Once he had time enough, he would pull this command center out of here and move it to a less precious building, such as the boys’ dorm, a hardy structure of concrete and cinderblocks from the 1960s with zero sentimental attachment for nearly everyone, even those who lived there.
“Any reports from our forward observers?” John asked.
One of his operators—it was Elayne from the post office—looked up after removing one of the two decidedly old-fashioned headphones. “John, forward outpost reports the two Apaches are back down and obviously rearming. No report of any kind of movement along the interstate, Highway 70, or anywhere else. We are getting an incessant signal in the last ten minutes from someone claiming to be Fredericks. He is on our primary frequency and is now at times overriding and jamming it.”
John motioned for the headphones and slipped them on. They felt strange, for after all, a few years earlier, he’d used earbuds, and these were definitely retro from the 1960s or before.
There was static, and then a few seconds later, he heard the voice again, and it was indeed Fredericks.
“Come on, John, that was just the first move. Talk to me before I send them back in again.”
Damn it. What to do? Transmit back for even more than a few seconds, and chances were that Fredericks was indeed overhead, his helicopter equipped with tracking gear, and they would get a rocket down their throats, killing every kid on the roof of the chapel.
And yet he so wanted to reply to see if there was some way to call this madness off—and if not, to tell the bastard to go to hell.
He was being baited, played.
He looked at Elayne, removing the headphones and handing them back to her. “Code word scramble,” he said. It was the signal for the teams on the net to switch to the first backup frequency, using old-fashioned ham radios and handheld units that the Franklin family had protected and stashed away before the Day and, in a surprise gesture, had offered to John just the day before. Elayne announced the one-word signal and then immediately shut down transmission and powered off, as did the others, and they would now be in the dark for the next thirty minutes before powering up again.
If the Apaches were back down to refuel and rearm, they could be back in as little as twenty minutes.
John could now guess what Fredericks was up to. There would be no ground attack for hours, perhaps not even for days. He would not risk his limited assets. He had tasted good blood with his deadly surprise raid on the reivers. He was now taking it up a notch. As long as fuel and ammunition held out, he would just keep sending the Apaches in, believing that it would wear John and those with him down.
If he needed to report back to Bluemont, there would be no casualties on his side, just a nice request for more fuel and ammunition, couched such that it would look like he was doing the most effective of jobs suppressing rebellions with minimum cost to his side—an efficient job that always looked good on paper.
Cursing under his breath, John dashed out of the communications room and onto the front lawn of the chapel. Each breath was painful and his jaw ached, but he needed to focus and ignore the pain.
The students had managed to contain the fires, but they were still tearing back shingles to get at the last of the smoldering blaze. The aged, dried chestnut within burned easily.
The sight of them up on the roof while others stood watchful guard reminded him of the heroic efforts of Londoners during the Blitz, the faded black-and-white images of crews struggling to save their beloved Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Watching them at work, spotters ready to shout a warning to get off the roof, filled him with pride. He looked across the valley to the Assembly Inn, where the hospital was concealed in the basement. To his horror, he saw a couple of Bartlett’s old VW buses racing up to the front of the building, the aging hippie now playing ambulance driver for the casualties in town. Surely the Black Hawk circling above was watching every move.
“Maury, we gotta move now!” John cried.
As he ran to the Jeep parked in front of the building, he looked up. The Black Hawk was still circling. He watched the chopper as he climbed aboard the Jeep, and Maury raced down the road around one of the dorms.
“Pull up to the old gym!” John shouted. “I’m getting out here. You take off the other way, find a place under good concealment to park, and make your way on foot to the Assembly Inn.”
Maury grinned and nodded, and John jumped out of the vehicle. Maury continued on, and John stood for half a minute in plain view, looking straight up at the circling Black Hawk before going into the gym. If the chopper overhead did have advanced tracking capability, he now wanted to be seen going into the abandoned building. The cavernous basketball court was dark, empty, the air within dank and musty. It was a building the college wanted to replace even before the Day, and it had seen no use since. John loitered for five minutes or so and suddenly fought with the terrible urge for a smoke. He wished he had Ernie and his pocketful of cigars with him. He could sure use one now.
He finally slipped out one of the back doors and looked up. The helicopter had shifted a bit back toward Black Mountain. He took a deep, painful breath and ran behind the small dance hall barn. Rather than use the road bridge, he ducked down low and splashed through the tree-covered stream that fed into Lake Susan. He crouched for a minute between several abandoned cars parked on the far side and then sprinted the last few feet into a side entrance of the Assembly Inn.