Judgment Day -03 Read online

  “How can you be sure? We’ve seen so many awful things.”

  Tanner rubbed the stubble on his chin and smiled.

  “I haven’t told you much about Mason.”

  “No,” she said, searching his face. “Just that he was a marshal. And a good man. Better than you, you said.”

  “That part’s true. What I didn’t tell you is that he’s incredibly good at two things.”

  “What’re those?”

  “The first is that he can pull and shoot a pistol better than any man I’ve ever seen. Maybe better than any man left alive, things being as they are.”

  “I once saw a cowboy shoot a silver dollar flipping through the air. Think he could do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But I doubt he’d see much point in it. Mason has a different set of skills. He’s the kind of man who can keep his nerve when staring into another man’s eyes, knowing that one of them is about to die.”

  “That must come in handy, him being a marshal and all. What’s the second thing?”

  “He’s what the military called a brilliant tactician. He got some big fancy medals for it too.”

  “My teacher was a tactician.”

  “Really?” Tanner said, surprised.

  “Yep. He could do algebra without ever taking out his calculator.”

  Tanner smiled. “I see. Well, my son was a different kind of tactician.” He thought for a moment. “Let me give you an example. Let’s say you and I came across three men who wanted to eat us for dinner.”

  “That’s nasty,” she said with a disgusted look.

  “What do you think I’d do?”

  She furrowed her brow.

  “Is this some kind of trick question? You’d smash their heads in, and probably take their wallets too.”

  “Oh, you know me so well,” he said, grinning. “Mason would handle it differently. He’d probably lure one man away to an ambush, instigate a fight between the other two, and then shoot the lone survivor. When it was all said and done, they’d all be just as dead, but he would have been able to fight each one on his own terms.”

  “Ah, I see,” she said, nodding. “So, he’s smarter than you too.”

  He growled softly.

  She giggled, and Tanner couldn’t help but chuckle too.

  “You sure you’re ready to go back out there?” he asked. “You’ve seen how ugly it is.”

  “I think we need to.”

  “Why? Don’t tell me you’re getting tired of my charming company.”

  She gave him a little smile.

  “It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  “I want to ask you for a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” he said, squinting with suspicion.

  She reached under the blanket and brought out a small slip of folded paper. It looked like it had been folded and unfolded dozens of times. Tanner recognized it immediately as the note that Booker Hill had left behind. In it, Booker had asked that whoever found the note pass along one final message of love to his young daughter living in Salamanca, New York.

  “Salamanca is hundreds of miles away,” he pointed out.

  “Six hundred, but they’re not all out of our way.”

  “And how exactly would you know that?”

  “I looked at one of your maps in the cabin before going to bed last night.”

  “Ah,” he said, turning back to look out at the trees. “You’ve given this some thought.”

  “My mom will have more important things to worry about than this note. If we don’t deliver it ourselves, his daughter’s never going to see it. Not ever.”

  “It would mean not getting back to your mom for a while longer.”

  “I know,” she said, staring at him. “But what’s a few more days either way?”

  Tanner studied her for a minute. Young Samantha was becoming a very different person than the awkward eleven-year-old he had met just a few weeks earlier. Things like courage, strength, and purpose were becoming more than just spelling words.

  “All right then,” he said. “We’ll go to Salamanca.”

  “Just like that?”

  “You’d rather I throw a big fuss? Maybe stomp my feet and shout like an ogre?”

  “You do look a bit like an ogre,” she said, laughing.

  “You trying to butter me up?”

  “It’s just that I thought you’d say no. You didn’t want to go before.”

  “True.”

  “So, what changed your mind?”

  “I don’t know. I’m rested. My belly is full of food. And my wounds are healing.” He touched the two-inch gash on his forehead that had been stitched with fishing line. “Being back at nearly a hundred percent has improved my already sunny demeanor.”

  “Now that you mention it, you do seem like a happy ogre,” she said, grinning.

  “Besides,” he added, “if it’s important to you to deliver Booker’s message, who am I to say otherwise? You’re half of this team, right?”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “But I do have one condition,” he said, holding up an enormous finger between them.

  “What’s that?”

  “After we hand over the note, we head straight to Virginia to see your mom.”

  She raised her hand as if making a solemn pledge.

  “Deal.”

  By noon, they were almost ready to leave. The Escalade they had taken from a house in northern Atlanta was loaded with freeze-dried food from the pantry, as well as six gallon-sized jugs of water. Given their previous challenge of finding drinking water, Tanner would have taken even more, had he been able to find suitable containers. He also transferred fuel from the red Hummer parked in front of the cabin over to the Escalade. According the digital fuel gauge on the dash, they could travel nearly five hundred miles on what was now a full tank of gas. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be quite enough to make it to Salamanca, which meant they would have to either refuel along the way or, more likely, swap to another abandoned vehicle.

  Tanner set the Smith and Wesson Model 29, .44 Magnum on the dashboard. He had yet to fire the weapon since taking it from a backwoods kidnapper hiding in an old military bunker. It was fully loaded, but after those six rounds were spent, he suspected the weapon would become about as useful as a brick. Finding ammunition for such a rare caliber would be difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, his trusty Remington 870 Police Magnum shotgun, loaded with triple-aught buckshot, sat on the floorboard beneath his legs, and more than forty unfired shells were stuffed in his backpack.

  Samantha leaned her Savage .22 Varmint rifle against the inside of the SUV door. She only had a couple of dozen rounds for the rifle, but Tanner assured her that, by the time those ran out, they would have found another box or two. With billions of .22LR rounds having been sold every year for decades, the existing supply would probably outlast mankind.

  Tanner unfolded a large map and studied it one final time. The drive from his cabin to Salamanca, New York, was almost exactly six hundred miles. His planned route would take them north along Highway 221 as far as Wytheville, Virginia. From there they would veer onto I-77 and eventually onto I-79, the latter of which would take them all the way over to Morgantown, West Virginia. At that point, they would detour around Pittsburgh, which was likely to be as hellish as Atlanta had been. The final couple of hundred miles would be traveled along two-lane highways as they snaked their way across the entire state of Pennsylvania and up into New York State.

  Unfortunately, much of the trip had to be made by interstate, thoroughfares that were not only blocked by millions of vehicles but also frequented by every imaginable danger. While he didn’t like the risk that the journey posed, Tanner accepted that the decision to go had already been made. Whether they were traveling to Virginia to take Samantha to her mother, or to New York to deliver a note to a girl who anxiously awaited her father’s return, they would have to face
the world in which they lived. Danger was a part of life, now more than ever before.

  He started the Escalade and listened to the engine.

  “You hear that?”

  Samantha rolled down her window and listened.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That, darlin’, is the sound of another adventure about to begin.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  President Glass stared at the phone as if was waiting for news on whether a loved one had survived a lifesaving surgery. The Secretary of Defense, General Kent Carr, had assured her that he would find Samantha. But for the past forty-eight hours, his special task force had turned up nothing. What was supposed to have taken only a few hours had now stretched into days. Somehow, Samantha had disappeared. And while President Glass drew a modicum of comfort that her daughter had been spotted alive, she couldn’t shake the dreadful worry.

  Finally, she could wait no longer. She snatched up the phone and dialed General Carr’s closed-circuit number.

  He answered on the second ring.

  “No news yet, Madam President.”

  “You said it would only take a few hours.”

  “We’re doing all we can. She’s apparently left the Atlanta area.”

  “But how? Why? Why would she run like this?”

  “My guess is she’s afraid.”

  “Of what? Our soldiers?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What do you mean perhaps?”

  General Carr hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Ma’am, I think we should meet in person.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Not over the phone. Let’s talk in private.”

  “In private?”

  “Somewhere out of the way. Not in the main conference areas.”

  “There’s not another pandemic, I hope,” she said, forcing a nervous laugh.

  “No, ma’am. It’s something else.”

  “Is it serious?”

  He paused. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it is.”

  A single overhead fluorescent light lit the small, nondescript conference room. There were only six chairs, and one of them tilted to the side because of a missing set of casters. The room was located in the far northwest corner of the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, an area that President Glass rarely visited. She wouldn’t even have known about the room, had it not been for her Chief of Staff, Yumi Tanaka, who had assured her that it was the most secluded meeting spot in the entire center.

  As Yumi and President Glass stepped into the room, they found General Carr already waiting inside, pacing nervously in front of a long, narrow window.

  He immediately nodded to the president, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Madam President.”

  “General Carr,” she replied, searching his face for clues as to the purpose of the clandestine meeting.

  He said nothing as her security detail came in and quickly searched the room. When they were satisfied, they looked to President Glass for instructions.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Please wait outside.”

  The three agents went out into the hall and took up positions.

  General Carr turned to Yumi.

  “Miss Tanaka, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like a word with the president alone.”

  Yumi seemed a little put off but said nothing as she turned to leave. President Glass reached over and placed a hand on her arm.

  “General, Yumi can be trusted with anything we have to say.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” he said, offering Yumi an understanding smile. “However, I still think it’s best that we discuss this matter in private. For now, anyway.”

  President Glass considered protesting, but the look on General Carr’s face told her to let it go.

  “Very well.” She turned to Yumi. “Dear, please wait outside with the agents.”

  Yumi nodded, not quite hiding the worried look on her face.

  After Yumi closed the door behind her, President Glass turned back to face General Carr.

  “Okay, General, what’s this all about?”

  “It might be best if we sit,” he said, sliding a chair out for her and then taking a seat himself.

  She reluctantly sat on the gray metal chair, finding it cold and hard.

  “This must be serious,” she said. A thought suddenly hit her like a punch from J. Gordon Whitehead. “Oh, my God, it’s Samantha, isn’t it?”

  He quickly shook his head.

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  “Thank God.” She took a deep calming breath. “What is it then?”

  General Carr placed his hands on the table as if needing the laminated wood to help steady him.

  “We’ve received word that chemical weapons have been used on our soil.”

  “What? Where?” she demanded. This was not at all what she was expecting to hear.

  “It occurred at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia.”

  She furrowed her brow, confused.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing?”

  “That’s just it. No one outside the military has ever possessed chemical weapons. Not in the US, anyway.”

  “Then where did they come from?”

  “We recovered a serial number from one of the Mk-116 bombs. It traces back to a large batch of chemical weapons decommissioned more than forty years ago.”

  “If they were decommissioned, shouldn’t they have been destroyed?”

  “Indeed, they should have been. However, records indicate that some of the bombs were never properly accounted for.”

  “So, what are you suggesting? That someone within our government or the military is involved in this attack?”

  “I don’t see how else they could have gotten the weapons.”

  “But who would do such a thing?”

  He shrugged. “With the limited resources we have left, we may never know.”

  “How many weapons are we talking about?”

  “There were a total of twelve bombs declared missing. Of those, we have confirmed that three were used on the law enforcement center.”

  “My God, are you saying that someone has nine more of these chemical weapons?”

  “I have no way of knowing for certain, but I think it’s prudent to assume so.”

  President Glass sat back in her chair and began unconsciously twisting a curl in her hair as she considered the significance of the attack as well as the missing weapons.

  “How many people were killed?”

  “A little over three hundred.”

  “And injured?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  Her face took on a pained expression.

  “All police officers?”

  “Marshals. This attack essentially destroyed what little remained of the Service.”

  “All of them?”

  He shrugged. “There might still be a few scattered about the country, tending to loved ones. But the Marshal Service as a whole is no longer viable.”

  Tears formed in the corner of her eyes.

  “Those were good men and women.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why would anyone do this?”

  He pulled out three black and white photographs from under his jacket and spread them out on the table. They were glossy satellite images, zoomed out far enough that the entire FLETC compound was visible.

  “This is the law enforcement center?” she asked.

  “Yes, and if you’ll look here,” he said, pointing to several rectangular blocks near the west side of the compound, “you’ll see five large trucks.”

  “Military trucks?”

  “No, commercial tractor-trailers.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “We think they’re ste
aling weapons stored at the center.”

  “What kind of weapons?” she asked, leaning down to study the photographs.