she was a redhead. Never met her. We hit the runway and I’m right on top of Air Force One. I go around while they taxi to meet the convoy that’ll take the President up to NORAD. I’m turning downwind to get back to the airport, and off to my left I see tracer rounds and gunfire zipping all across the airfield. It was an ambush. We had Chinese insurgents everywhere in those days. They knew the President hadn’t made it into D.C., so they were going for the kill shot at Colorado. So Air Force One just turns around and takes off at max power straight back down the runway.
“Now the plan is to orbit the air base until the Army can re-secure it and clean out the insurgents. Then we’ll try to go in again.”
“An hour after that, the plan to make it into the bunker and ride out the attack was scrubbed. A few minutes later and we’ve got reports of Chinese aircraft all across the Southwest. Someone shot down a transport dropping paratroopers in Texas. That’s when they came up with ‘Running Back,’ which was to get the President down to Yuma where we had air superiority and the Eighty-Second Airborne on the ground.”
You must have thought about your wife and child back in Maryland.
The Crippled Man drank some of his tea. Swallowing. Eyes distant.
“That was the plan,” continued the Crippled Man. “The plan until China responded with a full-scale nuclear strike. It’s dawn in the East, like zero five thirty and their missiles, and ours, are streaking across the upper atmosphere. We’re still trying to clear the airport; I’m even being called in to make close air support strafing runs. We’re already low on fuel and there’s a rumor our tanker got jumped and that we might not be getting refueled at all. I mean, everything’s going to hell in a handbasket, and I thought that’d already happened two weeks prior. So we hit it. We head south. I think command was thinking we’d take the President to South America. But we don’t have the fuel. Maybe we’ll get some somewhere, but who knows. Anyway, we’re out over southern Colorado entering New Mexico and, last time I counted, Colorado gets fourteen military-grade nuclear warheads in the space of thirty minutes.”
“Worse thirty minutes of my life listening to stations go offline.”
“We get a tanker rendezvous and it’s now or never for some fuel. I’m on fumes but Air Force One always drinks first. EMPs are playing hell with our commo, but the F-35 I was flying was hardened for that kind of stuff. Still, let me tell you it’s hell at Mach One with mushroom clouds everywhere, vapor trails crossing the sky, and aircraft fleeing in every possible direction.”
“Air Force One is halfway through her drink when radar control gives me a fast mover aimed straight for us. So I’m thinking at that point the Chinese have somehow managed to get one of their supersecret J-35s into our airspace and they’re shootin’ up targets of opportunity. Anyway, long story short, it wasn’t a J-35. It was a damn missile. Did I mention I’m down to just guns now? My missiles were gone back at the airfield. So they vector me in on this thing and I’m thinking I’m on a hard intercept for the latest, at the time back then, Chinese stealth fighter. Probably still is. Who’s built anything since? Anyway, I had about thirty seconds to realize it was a low-yield Chinese version of a Tomahawk and they were going for Air Force One. So I hit it with my plane. Head-on. If it woulda been armed, which they don’t do until seconds before impact, I wouldn’t be here. Instead, it cartwheeled me through the air and the plane took over and ejected me. I woke up with my legs crushed out here on the prairie. Not too far from here in fact. That was my little flying tackle for Operation Running Back. Get the President out of Dodge. I don’t suppose you even know if he ever made it? But then again, how would you?”
Pause.
The Old Man finished his tea.
“He did. He made it to Yuma that day or the next.”
The Crippled Man made a face. Then he smiled and softly chuckled to himself.
“How d’ya like that. Forty years later and I can stop kicking myself.” He looked at the Old Man. “Thanks for that.”
Don’t ask me what happened after.
Don’t ask me what time it was on my car radio clock when it stopped. When I saw the mushroom cloud rising over Yuma in my rearview mirror.
Don’t ask me about that.
“So that’s my shameless story of how I saved the President. But the nugget I’m tryin’ to give you in all of that, is this: Colorado… well, Colorado just ain’t no more. Like I said, at last count that morning, she’d had fourteen direct hits from high-yield nuclear weapons. The land up there is poisoned. I wouldn’t go there. You won’t survive even buttoned up inside your tank.”
The Old Man stood, brushing the dead grass and twigs from his pants.
“It’s death up there,” said the Crippled Man.
Silence.
“I know,” said the Old Man.
AT NINE O’CLOCK the Old Man turned on the beacon.
“I have your signal. The device is now active. That’s good,” said Natalie, General Watt. “Now can you point the lens toward a significant or prominent land feature such as a large hill or mountain?”
The Old Man pointed the device at the small conical hill in the distance.
“Now, squeeze the trigger and hold it while pointing at the feature you’ve selected.”
The Old Man squeezed the trigger.
A small red light on top of the device blinked twice.
“Are you squeezing the trigger?” asked Natalie.
“Yes,” said the Old Man.
Silence.
“Are you holding the trigger down?” she asked again.
“Yes, I am holding the trigger just like you asked me to.”
Silence.
The Old Man, wearing his helmet, standing in the hatch, continued to point the device toward the hill.
“I’m afraid there’s a problem,” Natalie said over the radio. “The device does not work properly.”
Chapter 47
“What does that mean?” said the Old Man.
The day is turning hot. The air is thick with humidity.
Can you let go?
Silence.
“What does that mean?” the Old Man says again when there is no immediate reply.
You know what it means, my friend.
But I thought there would be another way. I thought my fear was telling me what the end would be. But I hoped, I reasoned, that everything would turn out different. I hoped for better.
“Did we come all this way for nothing?” asks the Old Man.
Silence.
“Natalie?”
And…
“General Watt. Speak to me! Tell me what this means.”
“It means,” she said plainly. Her voice stilted. Almost machine-like. “It means the mission will not be completed.”
The Old Man stared about him, watching the warriors walk their horses in great circles, the children following their mothers. The Boy and his granddaughter stood near the horses. The Boy was talking, pointing, teaching her all about horses.
“What are we supposed to do now?” asked the Old Man.
“Go home and live,” said Natalie softly.
“And you. What will you do, Natalie?”
