The Last Run: A Novella (5 page)

“Why did you just switch off the transponder?” she asked.

“It’s not the transponder I’m worried about,” Mulligan said.

“The remote control link?”

Mulligan nodded as he slowed the SCEV and brought it into a relatively tight left turn. “Exactly. Listen, I’m not going to the rig lift. I’ll drop you guys at Bravo Exit. You’ll be able to get into the base from there.”

“What about you?”

“One Truck and I are going out for a Sunday drive,” Mulligan said.

“Sergeant Major, that’s totally against regulations,” CJ said.

“My wife and kids have no idea what’s coming, CJ. There’s no one to help them. In the rig, I might be able to get to them in time.” Mulligan was aware of the peculiar pleading quality that had crept into his voice, and he despised himself for it. His heart was hammering, and his face tingled. He felt as if he couldn’t get enough air. He was a hair’s breadth away from panic, and the sensations did not suit him. He had faced substantial dangers in the past, and he’d never felt like he was about to unload a series of Hershey squirts into his underwear. But this time, it wasn’t necessarily his life that was on the line. It was his family’s.

“So you’re just going to steal the rig?” Peter asked from the back.

“I would consider it more of a non-collateral loan,” Mulligan said. “Don’t sweat it, guys. You’ll be able to access the base from Bravo. No one’s going to leave you outside, and we’ll be there in three minutes.”

“But how will you get back in the base?” CJ asked. “Even if you
do
somehow manage to outrun nuclear missiles and get to them, how will you get back?”

“I’m sure they’ll let us in,” Mulligan said. Which was hardly the truth; he just hoped someone would have a heart and send the lift up for the rig, even though the operating procedures stated just the opposite. Anyone who wasn’t in the base before it was fully locked down wasn’t getting in, at all.

“Scott, that might not be the case,” Peter said gently.

“I’ll figure it out,” Mulligan said. “Don’t worry about me. Just get ready to hit the deck running as soon as we get to Bravo.”

“No,” CJ said.

“Sergeant Lopez, now is not the time to start arguing with me,” Mulligan warned her. There was no pleading in his voice now, just one hundred percent Special Forces kickass.

“I’m not arguing.” As she spoke, CJ turned in her wing seat and looked past the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the second compartment. Mulligan noticed it, and wondered if she was trying to urge Peter into restraining him. With his right hand, he loosened his shoulder straps, despite the SCEV’s swaying. He knew Peter didn’t have what it took to get through a stand-up fight, but there was no law that said he might not get lucky with Mulligan strapped into his seat.

“Don’t get any ideas, guys,” he said.

“Even a good one?” CJ said.

It was an odd response, so Mulligan said, “Tell me what’s on your mind, Sergeant.”

“You’re wasting a lot of time running us to Bravo, only to have to turn around again.”

“Making sense is not optional right now, CJ.”

“She’s saying we’ll go with you,” Peter said.

Mulligan barked out a surprised laugh. “The hell you say.”

“We will,” CJ said. “It’ll be safer with all of us on board. These rigs are pretty simple, but trying to pilot one solo with what’s about to happen probably isn’t going to register very high on the smart meter.”

“Guys, thanks a million, but you’re going to un-ass at Bravo.”

“Scott, you’re wasting time. Tess and the girls need us to get there, fast.” CJ looked at him evenly from across the cockpit.

“I’m not getting through,” Peter said. “Either the civilian mobile system is clogged up, or there’s been a failure. Maybe the Russians detonated a bomb in orbit or something, and the satellites are down. CJ’s right, the quicker we get there, the quicker we can get back and throw ourselves on the mercy of whoever’s going to listen to us.”

“What about Rachel?” Mulligan asked. “She’s down in Harmony, and she’s probably scared shitless. She’s going to need you guys.”

“Yeah,” CJ said, and her voice was small. “She will. But she’s safe, and that’s what’s important. We can have a happy homecoming when we get back.”

Mulligan glanced over at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m
not
kidding! Are we going to do this, or not?”

“Come on, Scott. Let’s get on with it,” Peter said.

Mulligan didn’t know what to do. He very much wanted to spin the rig around and charge off toward Scott City, but he didn’t want to bring the Lopezes with him. Good intentions aside, they didn’t have any skin in this game. He was touched by their concern for him—more deeply than he could possibly express, under the circumstances—but he thought they were acting even crazier than he was, at the moment.

“This is nuts,” he said, finally.

“What’s nuts is burning up time talking about it,” CJ said. “We’re willing to go and help out. But you have to go
now
, Sarmajor.”

“Peter,” Mulligan said. He didn’t know if he was asking for additional confirmation, or if he was giving the man a chance to overrule his wife in a last chance bid to allow sanity to prevail.

“I still can’t get through to them on the phone, Scott. Let’s get this done—we’re here for you, man.”

Mulligan shook his head and sighed cavernously. Taking them with him on a personal mission was not just dumb, it was almost criminal. And criminal might be exactly the case: what he was about to do was in violation of about a million regulations.

He cranked the control column to the left, and brought the rig into a tight turn, then accelerated away from Harmony Base.

***

“
G
ENERAL?
M
ULLIGAN’S GOING
AWOL
,”
Lieutenant Colonel Larry Walters announced. He was the commanding officer of Harmony’s SCEV detachment, a former transportation corps officer whose lazy eye had led to his unfortunate nickname “Walleyes.” He was a bit of a hard-charger, one of those officers who preferred to intimidate his subordinates as opposed to setting an example for them to live by. Benchley had never cared for him all that much, but it looked like the time had come for him to finally get used to Walters and his arrogant style.

“How do you mean?” Benchley asked. He still stared at the main display. The base at Pearl Harbor had survived the first attack, thanks to the anti-missile defense system that had been erected around the installation, but more birds were on the way. The cities on the West Coast were now in jeopardy as well, and from what he could tell, the defense systems around San Diego had either failed or hadn’t been activated. Unless that situation got squared away soonest, then San Diego would be hosting the first of the Russian weapons in two minutes.

His son and ex-wife were in San Francisco. Unless the anti-missile defenses did their job, they had only seven minutes left to live.

“SCEV One is rolling
away
from the base, sir,” Walters said. “The command uplink has been shut off in the cockpit, so we can’t recall the vehicle remotely. The bastard’s essentially locked us out.”

Benchley tore his eyes away from the main display. Walters stood next to the vehicle operations station in the last row of consoles, and he looked at Benchley with angry eyes. The small man was clearly fuming at this sudden development, and for a moment, Benchley admired him. The world was going to hell, and all Walters could care about was that one of his rigs had been hijacked.

To lead such a simple life…

“Where’s he headed?”

“Westerly course, moving at around fifty miles an hour. We’re getting that information from GPS, since the rig’s transponder is shut off.”

Benchley nodded slowly. Mulligan was going to get his family. Completely against regulations, but Benchley understood the big command sergeant major’s motivation a hundred percent. If he didn’t at least try to get to the people most important to him, then he would die a million deaths over the coming years.

“Can we do anything about it, Colonel?”

“Sir? No, there’s nothing we can do about it, unless we send out another rig to bring him back under force of arms,” Walters said, his frustration evident.

“Then wish the sergeant major well and forget about it,” Benchley said.

“But—”

“But what, Colonel? You already said there’s nothing we can do about it. The man is going for his family. Forget about him, because I guarantee you, he’s forgotten all about you.”

“I intend to press charges against him if he makes it back,” Walters said, still playing the part of the stubborn fool.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Walters.”

A stir went through the command center then, a sort of collective moan. Benchley looked up at the display.

San Diego was gone. The first American city had fallen to the Russian attack, and Los Angeles and San Francisco were next on the chopping block. Benchley felt numb. He couldn’t believe it had come to this.

The destruction of San Diego seemed to galvanize the American response. As he watched, a sudden flurry of missiles rose from their silos in the American Midwest, and from bases that Benchley hadn’t known existed on the East and West Coasts. More harbingers of death riding columns of fire ascended into the heavens, reaching for near-orbital altitudes before they would arc back toward the planet. Over the course of their flight, the boosters would deploy multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, essentially several nuclear warheads on a steerable platform known as a bus. The bus would release each warhead at various heights and positions, resulting in a shotgun-type of attack that would be difficult to defend against. Since Russia’s missile defenses were substantially inferior to that of the United States—not that the much-hyped system seemed to have worked very well for San Diego—the Russians would have a much tougher time blocking the hits.

Benchley reached for one of the other phones on the console before him. It was connected to the commercial network, and he dialed his son’s number in San Francisco. All he got was a fast busy signal. He turned to the workstation before him and sent an urgent email to his son’s account, as well as a text to his phone, but he knew the chances of William receiving either were extremely slim. He kept trying, both phone and internet, watching as the first Russian payload drew nearer to San Francisco. He was momentarily elated when he saw the first was intercepted, disappearing in a flash that indicated radar contact had been lost with the vehicle. But then three more descended toward the city. At least one of them made it through the missile defense screen, and San Francisco was turned into a funeral pyre. Benchley felt his heavily-cultivated facade of discipline begin to fracture, and his eyes burned and tears welled up in them.

You were a good boy, Billy. Daddy loves you.

***

SCEV
O
NE ROCKETED
across the Kansas landscape as fast as Mulligan could push it, and not risk a rollover. Even though the countryside looked deceptively flat, it was chock full of topographical irregularities that the rig’s sturdy suspension did little to alleviate. To say the ride was uncomfortable was a tragic understatement, but he wasn’t interested in comfort at the moment. All his attention was fixed on getting to his destination, and while he was taking chances with the speed—and with occasionally crashing through smaller trees as opposed to going around them—he wasn’t going to do anything critically stupid that might prevent him from fulfilling his mission.

Beside him, CJ stirred slightly in the copilot’s seat. “Oh,
Jesus
—”

Mulligan glanced out the side viewports. Racing across the clear blue sky were three puffy contrails that quickly lengthened as the missiles at their heads accelerated into the air. Mulligan’s mouth went dry. These weren’t interceptors. They were full-on ICBMs.

“Must be from Kindlebrook,” he said, facing forward again. “I’d heard it’d been activated a while ago. It’s a second-string base, not one of the big primaries. Means Uncle Sugar is pulling out all the stops. This is going to majorly suck, folks.”

“My God,” CJ said, her voice soft and barely audible over the racket of the SCEV’s passage. “My God, we’re really doing it.”

“Yeah,” was all Mulligan could say.

A road appeared ahead, and Mulligan checked the moving map display. It was one of the several small farm roads that crisscrossed the area, designed more for farmers to get to their crops as opposed to real transportation between towns and cities. As the rig bore down on it, the millimeter wave radar detected a vehicle ahead and an audio cue rang over his headset. On the shoulder of the road was a red pickup truck, its electronics probably fried by the first blast of EMP the vehicle’s interferometers had already detected a few minutes ago. A stoop-shouldered man stood by the truck’s tailgate, watching the hulking SCEV approach. He hitched up his baggy jeans and gave a tentative wave. Mulligan continued driving on, and the SCEV grew light on its tires for a moment as it hurtled over the small incline the roadway sat upon. He left the farmer and his dead truck behind in the cloud of spreading dust.

Sorry, pal. No ride for you.

Mulligan studied the map for a moment as he coaxed the rig across open farmland. “We’ll head for the next road and turn south,” he told CJ and Peter. “It’s not as direct as the route we’re on now, but it’ll be flatter, and we’ll be able to make a bit better time.”

“Anything’s better than this,” Peter said over the intercom. His voice sounded weak and pale, and Mulligan wouldn’t have been surprised if he started puking all over the second compartment. If he hadn’t had so much on his mind at the moment, he might’ve tossed up a bit himself.

“Just stay in your seat, Peter,” he said.

“Believe me, I’m not going anywhere. Except, maybe to the head.”

“Tough it out,” Mulligan told him. “Smoother sailing in about five minutes.”

The SCEV bucked and trembled as it sped across the farmland, blasting a path of devastation through someone’s wheat field. Mulligan thought it was a shame it was too early to have harvested it—he felt certain that foodstuffs were about to become very tough to find after the next couple of hours. Seemingly on the horizon, a farm house sat, sprawling across the landscape. From behind his sunglasses, he couldn’t see any signs of life, which meant that no one was likely to waste their time shooting at the rig as it thundered on, its turboshaft engines screaming like twin banshees.