Predators

Then there was this Rutherford dame. Maybe five feet tall out of her heels, maybe forty five, fifty years old. Serious, a hard edge in her eyes, but a soft one, too. Like a falcon. Like a falconer had just pulled the hood off her head. Her eyes blinking, her head swiveling, and when I looked at her the only word that ran through my mind was "machine." A human machine, calculating, using her senses to figure out what was happening around her -- and then she'd look at Acheson and melted. To my eyes, it was like she had just discovered the order of the universe -- and it wasn't what she thought it was.

And Ben? He was lost in thought, a different kind of machine altogether...

"Ben?" I remember saying, and he looked up at me, and I saw "LOST" in his eyes.

"Yeah?"

"What's our play, man?"

"There's enough fuel to get us to Brazil, or west Africa somewhere, but not to the US."

"Probably better to stay here," Rutherford said.

"Nowhere else TO go, right now, anyway" he said, his voice almost a whisper.

"Not until this is over," Rutherford added.

And there it was. In the blink of an eye, the world had gone from normal, what it was, to insane. What it always came down to when War begins.

When it's over? When is it ever really over? What next?

I remember Ben flipping switches after that, turning off batteries and the cabin going dark. He groped in the closet, get his coat and a medical kit, then found a flashlight to get us to the stairs. He led is down to the last bus, and I remember him standing there, looking up at the huge Boeing -- 'his aircraft,' I recall thinking to myself just then. He alone commanded that thing, and now he was surrendering her, walking away as the world began crashing down around us.

And I could tell it was eating him up. Who wouldn't feel that way?

We were standing down on the ground in heavy rain when the first missile streaked by, just over our heads, and before anyone could react it detonated a few hundred yards away, over the middle of the runway, then dozens of floating bomblets fluttered down all around us...

+++++

Acheson heard the roar and pulled Rutherford down to the ground, covered her body with his own. Woodward, pulled down by Liz and Persephone, felt Tate cradle the girls. The bus stood between them and that first detonation, and first the concussive wave lifted it up into the air and spun it around like a child's toy -- debris falling all around them, and waves of shrapnel cut into the aircraft. Fuel began leaking from the wing tanks, and when it was over Acheson kneeled, surveyed the scene as two more incoming missiles hit the air force complex at the opposite end of the airfield.

"Three missiles," he said out loud. "Three got through..." he said as he turned and looked at the Boeing, at the fuel, spilling like blood, from her wing tanks...

"We've got to get away from here," he said, then he saw 'Sandy Beach,' sitting by the overturned bus and he ran to her, Rutherford by his side. Blood was running from her ears, and she had a deep laceration on her forearm, but she tried to stand and Acheson helped her.

"Are you okay?"

She pointed at her ears, shook her head, and he nodded, put his hand on her shoulder.

"Oh my God," he heard Woodward whisper, and he turned his attention to the people trying to get out of the bus.

He saw more people with lacerations, burned flesh, people trying to crawl out or walk on broken arms and legs. People lay on the ground like scattered dolls, cradling broken arms or a dying loved one, then Acheson looked at Rutherford.

"I guess this is the law of unintended consequences, all come to life?" he said, his voice dripping with malicious sarcasm.

She nodded, saw pools of fire reflected in his eyes, then turned and walked away.

He ran over to Woodward, helped him with one of the girls -- who seemed more than dazed.

"Liz?" the old cop sighed, "Liz, can you hear me?" Blood was trickling from her left ear, and the right side of her body looked scorched.

Acheson and the other girl help the other old man, Tate, sit up; he rubbed his eyes and shook his head then stood.

"We've got to get out of here," Tate said, looking for Woodward, then he saw Acheson looking at his damaged aircraft: the shredded tires, engine cowlings punctured, oil and hydraulic fluid running onto the tarmac -- and without asking Tate knew the Boeing was mortally wounded, would never fly without serious reconstruction.

He turned and was walking back to Woodward and the girls -- when he flinched, felt the super-sonic booms of aircraft passing through the clouds overhead. He turned, saw Acheson running for them -- then bombs started falling like rain, slamming into the hillside on the far side of the airfield. He watched as more fell -- landing closer -- then he saw Acheson flying through the air -- just before he and the girls pulled Woodward into a drainage ditch.

Part V -- Dance on a Volcano

Chapter 25

Somewhere in the Atlantic

He woke up.

Tried to sit up, but it felt like he was cemented, to the earth.

He tried to lift his hands to his face, but couldn't. They weighed too much.

He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off, feeling lost and afraid.

+++++

He opened his eyes. Turned his head.

Gray. Nothing but gray. Was that steel? Are these steel walls?

A woman walked by. A nurse, and he tried to speak but everything he said was muffled, garbled, his words like hollow echoes coming from the middle of his skull. An Air Force nurse turned and spoke to him, and he saw her lips move, saw her eyes on him, but he couldn't hear a thing she said.

"I can't hear you," he tried to say, but he felt the words more than heard them, and incompletely, at that -- like every sound was coming from behind walls of hissing static, with an occasional high-pitched whine thrown in for good measure -- but he saw her smile before she turned away.

He tried to think, imagine where he was, then he gave up and put his head down on the pillow. He felt himself drifting...then...

Someone lifted an eyelid, shined a light in his eye and he tried to turn away but strong hands held him fast. He blinked when whoever it was finished, then he felt a sting in his upper arm. He was rolling down a narrow corridor a moment later, then in a small room with bright lights overhead. A busy, worn out man leaned over and peered in his eyes, then he felt himself drifting away again.

+++++

He heard someone calling his name, pinching an earlobe and calling his name.

He opened his eyes, saw a woman eyes peering over a surgical mask. Brown eyes, warm and soothing...

"Captain Acheson? You can hear me?"

Not American, but not Russian, either. Maybe.

"Yup."

"Good. You know where you is, are?"

"No."

"You know what day it is?"

"No, I don't."

"How about time? Know what time it are...uh, is?"

"No, no, nothing. Look, can you tell me where I am, what day it is? I'd kind of like to know, you know?"

She nodded her head, wrote on her clipboard. "You on NATO ship, hospital ship. Uh, you found three weeks ago, after attack on Lajes. Surgery one week ago, you out since."

"Where are we, I mean...like at sea, or anchored somewhere?"

"Oh, yes, we go Lisbon maybe, or Gibraltar."

"War? Still war?"

"Oh, no, war over. Seven cities destroyed, then stop."

"Cities? Which ones?"

She looked away, shook her head. "New York and Washington in America. Boston too, I think, someplace like that. Moscow and St Petersburg in Russia, some submarine base, too. Maybe Hamburg, in Germany, and a navy base in southern France. There are stories about Korea and China in the news, nobody know much yet. So, you are pilot captain?"

"Yes. American Airlines, and a major in the US Air Force."

"Oh? This I did not know. You feel pain now?"

"Yes, a little."

"Where? Can you point where?"

He tried to move his right leg, but it felt stiff, weak, and he said "The side of my head, behind my right ear."

"You have ringing in ears?"

"A little, yes."

"No other pain?"

"My leg is, it feels strange. It hurts, then it goes away."

"Break near knee. Bad fracture. Will need surgery. In cast now."

"There were people with me. Last names Woodward, Rutherford. Any way to check on these people?"

"I try. You rest now," she said, slipping a syringe into his IV. "We be in land tomorrow, then maybe you knows more."

+++++

He felt himself moving and opened his eyes, saw men ahead and behind him, and he realized he was on a stretcher, moving through the corridors of a ship. He saw warnings -- in Cyrillic --painted on the walls, then he looked at the uniforms the men wore, but he didn't recognize them. They came to the main deck and he was in sunlight, being carried down a long, sloping ramp, and he looked up at the ship, saw a Russian ensign flying and he lay back, looked up at the sky and realized he'd told that nurse he was in the Air Force.

There were men at the bottom of the ramp, men in suits, and when his stretcher reached the men they looked at his chart, and one of them came over to him.

"Major Acheson?" the man said.

"Captain. American Airlines."

"Yes, Major Benjamin Acheson, United States Air Force Reserves. C-17 pilot. We have your file now."

"So. I'm a prisoner of war, I take it?"

"If there was a war, yes, you would be. But now you are just an enemy of the people, of the Soviet Union. You will be dealt with accordingly."

"I see." He heard a voice, a familiar voice, and he turned, saw Rutherford with a Russian colonel, laughing gayly now, her arm slipped inside his, and as he watched her disappear inside a black Mercedes sedan, he looked up at the sky -- at a passing cloud. "The law of unanticipated consequences," he said, laughing a little.

"What was that, Major?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking. How funny life is, sometimes."

"Da. Funny. My family lived in St Petersburg. I am sure you think that funny, too."

And he did, in a way. He thought of Genie and The Duke, and of a butterfly sneezing somewhere on the far side of the world, and he smiled as they put his stretcher into the back of a dark green truck.

And he smiled when he thought of all the butterflies out there, just waiting to sneeze.

Chapter 26

He winced when the truck went over bumps and around curves, he pulled the blanket up to his chin when rain started dripping through tears in the canvas overhead, and as sleep was impossible he tried to peek under the canvas from time to time, look at the passing countryside. They drove north, he thought, for a few hours, then he heard aircraft overhead and soon they passed an air base. He saw troops removing EU and NATO signage, and as the truck slowed to turn into an newly erected prison area he saw men lined up along a wall, a firing squad taking aim -- then a burst of fire and falling bodies. He looked away, saw the tails of several Antonov 124s poking up above hangers a few hundred yards away, and two charred F-16s being bulldozed out of the way, presumably to make room for more transports.

The truck stopped outside a quonset hut and men came out for him, pulled his stretcher from the back of the truck and carried him inside the building. The first thing he noticed was the smell inside. Disinfectant, and lots of it, overwhelmed his senses, and he saw several men on beds, bags of IVs dripping into arms as he was carried to a bed. Nurses helped transfer him to a real bed, and the troops left, leaving him with even more unanswered questions.

A women, dressed in khakis and with insignia on her collars, came over to his bed and picked up the clipboard the soldiers had left laying on his belly, and she read through the pages, making notes from time to time, then she leaned close and spoke.

"Your name Acheson?" she said, her accent southern. Georgia, maybe, or the Carolinas.

"Yup."

"They got you in Lajes?"

"Yes'm."

She chuckled. "Let me guess. Texas?"

"Borned and raised, sweetheart."

"Jenny Cullwell, late of the Savannah Cullwells," she said, curtsying. "And a reluctant Navy doc."

"Navy, here?"

She shook her head. "We were en route from Italy, being evacuated. Seems we waited too long. What about you?"

"Flying an American 777 from Paris to DFW when we got the order to land."

"Wait...you're not military?"

"Major, Air Force reserves."

"Oh."

"Do you know what's happening out there?"

"Yes, I do. You sure you want to hear about it?"

He nodded his head.

"The main attack on the US was preceded by large scale cyber attacks, came right after all that bullshit, after Air Force One went down, like it had been coordinated. Nukes hit San Diego and Puget sound, Norfolk and sub bases in Maine and New London. Missile fields too, and major air force and naval bases right after, sub-launched ICBMs, we heard. From what I've heard, major Russian cities took a pounding, city-buster hydrogen warheads, maybe a hundred and fifty million dead in Russia and Eastern Europe. We knocked out most of their second wave of ICBMs, targeted on cities, knocked 'em right out of the sky, so loss of life at home was less, until their bombers hit. Cities in the south, Dallas and Atlanta, weren't hit so hard, but cities on both coasts are gone now, and up north."

"What about fallout?"

"It's bad. Getting worse. There's a lot of rain, too. Something about dust thrown up into the upper atmosphere."

"Nuclear winter."

"Sure, I guess that sounds right. Now, what about you?"

"They said my knee needs surgery, I think they operated on my head, but I have no idea why."

"Penetrating blunt force trauma," she said, pointing at his chart. "At least that's what the doc wrote, assuming I can read this scribbling. An Air Force doc at Lajes did the surgery, so relax, you might live. If one of Ivan's docs did it you'd be a drooling cauliflower right about now." She turned his head, examined the wound behind his right ear, then shined a light on it. "Think we'll start some antibiotics, margins are looking a little iffy."

"You have antibiotics?"

"Yup, but that's about it. No x-ray, no imaging equipment at all, and no orthos, so we'll cut off that cast and check it out, then recast you. So, you're a pilot?"

"Yup."

"Fighters?"

"C-17s"

"Really? Well, ain't that interesting."

"Oh, why?"

"There are two of 'em here. MATS birds, from Charleston."

"Pilots?"

"Shot. Something about a code, so you might keep that in mind."

"Thanks. What about my leg? Just cast it, let it heal?"

"Probably, unless it's a tibial plateau fracture. If that's the case you'll have to have surgery, or you could lose that leg if you walk on it."

"Swell."

"Look, I'll just give it to you straight. You might want to skip the antibiotics, all the heroics, and just try to check out. A Russian doc told me their estimate is three months before fallout levels become totally lethal."

"What about the southern hemisphere? Like South Africa, or the Falklands?"

"The song remains the same, Paco. You might eke out a few months more, but nobody really knows."

"So that's it? Do not go gently into that good night? End of the line?"

"Yup. This is actually a damn good spot, which is why Ivan moved in here so fast. They're digging caves in the mountains, trying to get a few hundred thousand into them, some kind of Strangelove thing, but a lot of fallout coming from the Americas falls into the Atlantic so levels right here aren't that bad -- until it rains, anyway. Then we get a spike."

"Any TV? Any news coming from home?"

She shook her head. "Not a thing. I'm guessing it's like medieval there now."

"I wonder what went wrong, with our air defenses, I mean."

The guy in the bed next to his looked up and laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, not really. You a pilot?"

"Yeah, F-22s. Look, it's simple. Our defense contractors sold us a bill of goods. Four hundred million bucks for an F-22 or F-35, and they were built on a simple premise. One of our fighters had to be good enough to take out ten, maybe twenty of there's. Right? Got that? So anyway, Ivan decides the way to take care of that is to send fifty aircraft for every one of ours. Overwhelm by sheer numbers. And it worked. Lajes and Iceland are like giant aircraft carriers, they make it possible to resupply NATO with an air bridge from the states, so Ivan knew if he took them, that was the end of any resupply effort. So he made a maximum effort, sent about 800 aircraft from here alone, and the Stennis and Teddy Roosevelt could keep about 30 in the air at any one time. They didn't last an hour."

Acheson looked at the man. One leg gone, his hands wrapped in gauze. Very bitter.

"It was a good plan...for fighting maybe Saddam's air force. But stupid for a Cold War style engagement, especially when the Russians started building really good aircraft, and cheap, too. Never learned to make good subs, though. That's what got 'em."

"Oh?"

"Our missiles in Montana never got off. Every silo hit in the first wave, taken right out of action. The boomers launched, of course, and that's like 3000 warheads right on target. War was over by then, but nobody bothered to tell Ivan. He just kept on comin' -- their bombers came in and met with zero opposition. Dropped their bombs and flew to Cuba, I guess."

"What did you do?"

"Me? I was escorting B-2s. From Italy to Germany and Poland, dropping tactical nukes on positions northeast of Berlin."

Acheson shook his head and Cullwell put the back of her hand on his forehead. "So, what's it gonna be? Antibiotics, or morphine?"

He laughed. "Fuck you, ma'am. I'm getting' better and goin' home, and if you want to join me, you better get this leg working. And pronto, if you know what I mean."

And she laughed too. "Right, Paco. I'll get right on that."

"You do that."

And she looked at him again. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Goddamn right I am. Me and Stumpy over there," he said, pointing at the F-22 pilot with his thumb, "are going to go out and hijack us a C-17. Fly it right down Main Street, USA on our way to Alpine, Texas. Ain't that right, Stumpy?"

"You bet, Tex. You steer that trash-hauler and I'll work the radios. We'll be pole dancin' in Big Springs with the best of 'em."

+++++

The last time I saw Acheson, on the ramp at Lajes, he looked like a broken man. His aircraft was, for all intents and purposes, dead, and that Rutherford woman a broken doll. She walked off into the night, leaving me and Persephone sitting there with Liz, wondering what to do next.

And what had it been?

Maybe three weeks since we'd left Puget Sound on the boat? Just a few days from San Francisco?

Then Tate is by my side, bombs are falling and that's when I saw Acheson. Flying through the air. Then I'm sliding into a ditch, and we crawled to a culvert as waves of bombs hit all around us. We crawled out an hour later and the first thing I saw was that airplane. It looked like two or three bombs had hit it dead center -- the wings were askew, the cockpit pointing straight up at the moon, and I thought it looked like a moon launch, gone bad. I saw firemen loading Acheson's body in an ambulance, and then he was gone.

And it hit me then, and hard.

How fast things can change.

How quickly things can come undone. All the things you take for granted, like -- bam, gone, in an instant. No time to think about it, just blink your eyes and your old life is gone. Here one minute, gone the next. Get on a plane in Paris, and presto! Five hours later we were supposed to be in Dallas. But five hours later that life was gone. Forever.

I heard that Rutherford woman say something about unintended consequences, and when I heard that I wondered what she meant. Personally, I mean. If she'd been making plans for something like this, then she'd been anticipating something like this might happen, and that got me to wondering. What kind of person does that? What kind of person sets out to destroy a world, a way of life, without thinking through the consequences for the people around them.