“This isn’t frickin’ Afghanistan!” she screamed, kneeing him in the groin. “You can’t just rape girls!”
He bellowed in pain but didn’t let go of her, pulling her tighter until she winced in pain. “Oh, I’m going to like you,” he told her, forcing his mouth on hers.
She reached for his empty Sam Adams bottle on the floor beside them. Her fingers fumbled, then grasped one by the neck but couldn’t get a firm hold. She was about to lose it as he shifted on her.
She grimaced, then slipped her tongue into his mouth and he came alive. She used the moment to grab the bottle and club him across the side of his head.
“Bitch!” he cried out, staggering to the side as she hit him again, sending him face down on the floor.
“Believe it, asshole!” She kicked him out of the way, the rage in her so strong that this time instead of opening the front door, she just kicked it open with little difficulty and ran out to blazing lights and guns and froze.
A dark, thin figure emerged from the lights, like one of those aliens from the movies.
“Jennifer, I’m Sergeant Wanda Randolph of the United States Capitol Police. Your mother sent me to help you.”
Jennifer wanted to cry like a baby. Instead she fixed her eyes on the long sniper rifle Randolph’s hands. “That’s a sweet Barrett M107 50 caliber. Can I hold it?”
59
It was the 91st Security Forces Squadron team that reached Sachs first at the Safeguard complex. She was unconscious on the floor under a console, her clothes, hands and hair a bloody mess. But she was breathing, and they stabilized her quickly then moved her outside.
As dawn broke over the 80-foot pyramid radar building, she blinked her eyes open into the cold light of day. It seemed like there were hundreds of soldiers, federal agents and FEMA officials on hand. News crews too, although they had been fenced off beyond the base.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“You,” said a familiar voice. “You’ll be just fine. But we’ll need to airlift you for surgery to get that bullet out of you. I got lucky. Mine passed clean through.”
She looked over to see Koz, his shoulder in a bandage. “Koz.” She paused. “Captain Li?”
Koz shook his head, clearly broken up. “Last official casualty of the D.C. attack. But it’s over, thanks to you.”
There was a shout, and a soldier ran up with a phone for Koz. “General Block, sir.”
Koz took the phone and said, “Captain Li is dead, sir. So is Marshall.”
Sachs could hear Block’s shocked voice on the other end. “You killed Marshall?”
“No, sir,” Koz said, looking at her. “She did.”
“Sachs?” Block repeated, even louder.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
There were more shouts and the snow kicked up. Sachs looked around, bewildered. Suddenly a Black Hawk chopper landed on the missile field. Her body instantly seized up in terror. Then the chopper’s big door slid open and out jumped a tall, thin African-American officer. And right behind her was Jennifer, running toward her.
“Mom!” Jennifer called. “Mom!”
Jennifer ran up to her and embraced her. Sachs cried her eyes out, kissing Jennifer all over, squeezing her until her baby could barely breathe. “Oh, baby.”
Koz had to gingerly pry them apart.
Jennifer straightened and looked over Koz once, then twice, and without disappointment. She must have seen something, because she smiled and saluted him.
Koz returned the salute, and Jennifer gave her mom a big thumbs-up, as if to say that, despite everything that had happened, America was going to be OK.
60
Koz sat in the conference room of the Looking Glass plane watching the ceremonies on TV. They were raising the U.S. Constitution from the bowels of the earth where the National Archives once stood, and he noted how regal President Sachs looked as a large crane lifted the indestructible container with the indestructible document into the air. But to Koz it was indestructible only because it lived in the hearts of Americans like Deborah Sachs.
He was so mesmerized by the scene that he didn’t notice his new communications officer walk in. “General Kozlowski
Koz glanced over at Captain Lyndon Han, who was holding his digital tablet and pen out for a signature. Han was no Captain Li, but it wasn’t Han’s fault. Koz signed off the checklist on the tablet and handed it back.
Han nodded at the TV. “Dinner at the president’s again tonight, sir?”
“No,” Koz said, brightening. “I’m cooking.”
As he spoke his BlackBerry buzzed with a text message. Only a few people besides the president were ever allowed to get through to him up here.
“Excuse me, Captain,” he said, looking at the text.
It was from Jennifer Sachs: R u really grilling 2nite? Count me in!:)
He stared at the text for a long minute. He could barely comprehend the tragic, terrible twist of fate that begat a new nuclear family from the ashes of a nuclear attack. He lost himself for a moment, remembering Sherry and so many others who perished in Washington. He should have been one of them, if not for Captain Li. Hell, they all would have perished were it not for Deborah Sachs.
Then his comm beeped with an FYI about a glitch in the VLF extension that he really needn’t worry about and his trance was broken.
“I better have a look at that myself,” he said, taking no glitch for granted since encountering the War Cloud.
As he rose from his chair and stood up, he looked out the compartment window and smiled. The Looking Glass plane was moving up and away above the clouds, its starboard wing reflecting the glint of a new day’s sun against clear blue skies.