AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The pilot’s voice was filled with panic and pain.
“Listen to me, son,” said the president, “I need you to take a breath and tell me what is happening. Can you do that?”
They heard the man take a long, hissing inhalation. Then in a voice that was a fraction steadier, the pilot said, “It’s … it’s all falling apart.”
“Are you injured, son? Can you tell me that much?”
“The bites … damn, you never think they could hurt this bad.”
The president closed his eyes. “Son … do you know what happened to General Zetter?”
There was a very long pause filled only with rapid breathing that was close to hyperventilation. Then in a substantially weaker voice, the pilot said, “He wasn’t bitten. I’m sure about that. None of them were.”
“Who wasn’t bitten?”
“The general. Everyone in the command truck. I was with them. I was on the ground by then. We weren’t anywhere near the fighting. Nobody was bitten. But … but … oh God. We thought he was sick, you know? From the dust cloud after we dropped the fuel-air bombs. We thought it was just from breathing the ash. But, damn it, nobody was bit. Not until … not until it all went to shit. General Zetter, Captain Rice. All of them. They went apeshit. Ah, jeez … I think they clipped the artery. The tourniquet’s not doing shit. Oh God, oh God.”
“Where is General Zetter?” asked the president.
But there was no answer.
None at all.
Which was too much answer for everyone in the Situation Room.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Billy Trout was no damn use at all to anyone. He knew it and everyone else knew it. Too much of him was bruised or strained, which meant he couldn’t drag bodies—and body parts—out of the buses, and he couldn’t work the janitor’s power-hose to wash away the black blood. It was gruesome work and he was not sorry that he couldn’t help.
Instead he set up his camera and began filming it. That and everything else.
With the jamming off, he put together a new field report, explaining the facts as he knew it, with many of the blanks filled in by Sam Imura.
It surprised Trout how forthcoming Sam was, and he pulled him aside for a moment to ask about that. They stood by a window that looked down on the parking lot and the rows of big yellow school buses.
“I’ve interviewed a lot of cops, soldiers, and federal types in the past,” Trout said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever had one actually spill the goods without either going off the record or prosecuting a personal agenda. In a nutshell, what gives?”
Sam shook his head. “I come from a long line of realists. My dad’s one. He’s a cop in California, in a small town out near Yosemite. He was never the kind to pad the truth or get behind an ‘official’ story. Dad believes that the truth is the truth.”
“No one I ever met in Washington agrees.”
“They can’t,” said Sam. “They’re politicians, and politics is about leverage, not about the truth. Not sure I ever heard a politician ever give a straight answer to anything. Everything’s agenda-based with them.”
“Okay, but you work for a bureaucrat.”
“Sure, but Scott Blair’s a lot like my dad. He’s not very well liked in D.C. because he always wants to cut to the bottom line.”
“He’s the one who wanted the president to bomb us back to the Stone Age?”
Sam met his eyes and nodded. “Yes, he was.”
“Nice.”
“Tell me something, Billy. Considering what’s happened and how things might be if POTUS followed Scott’s recommendation … do you think he made a bad call? Or do you think the president was right to cave and send the bombers back to the barn?”
