Alabama. Karin thought she would never feel about another man as she had felt about Tony, but Jake Lantz had changed her mind. She would marry him in a minute if he would ask her, and if he didn’t ask her, she might just ask him.
SERGEANT MAJOR CLAY MATTHEWS
Tactical officers in Officer Candidate School can be particularly brutal on the officer candidates, and if the TAC officers find some peculiarity, they can make it very hard. When the TACs learned that Jake had been raised Amish, they used it as a tool to try to break him. They called him “Amish boy” and asked if he knew how to drive a car, or turn on a light.
Sergeant Clay Matthews was a TAC NCO, and one day when the TAC officers were enjoying a field day with Jake, Sergeant Matthews called the young officer candidate to one side, telling the others that he would “get the candidate straight.” When he was sure that the TAC officers were out of earshot, Clay spoke to Jake in a quiet and reassuring voice.
“Son, don’t let these TACs get under your skin. They are paid to be assholes and they take their jobs seriously. But I’ve been watching you, and the truth is you’ve got more sand than anyone in this class, including the TACs. Stick with it; you are going to make a fine officer, one I would be proud to serve under.”
Jake did graduate, then went almost immediately to college. After he got his degree he went to flight school, and after flight school he did serve with Sergeant Matthews in Iraq. During their service together, he took special pleasure in submitting Sergeant Matthews’s name for the Silver Star when the sergeant pulled four of his fellow soldiers from a burning Humvee, then killed the six militants who had attacked them.
For the moment, Clay Matthews, who was forty-eight years old and divorced, was the noncommissioned officer in charge of Environmental Flight Tactics, Jake’s department. At least he had been the NCOIC while EFT still existed.
Jake valued dependability above all else in the people he worked with, and Clay was the most dependable man, soldier or civilian, Jake had ever known. If you asked Clay to take care of a job, you could put that job out of your mind, because Clay would take care of it. He would be, Jake was sure, his most valuable asset in setting up a survivalist team. With him, Jake felt confident of success. Without him, it would be iffy at best.
SERGEANTS JOHN DEEDLE AND MARCUS WARNER
Deedle and Warner were helicopter mechanics who worked on the flight line. In all the time Jake had been in the Army he had never run across any who were better at their job, or any two men who better complemented each other’s work. And their skills weren’t limited just to aircraft maintenance. The two men were among the most resourceful he had ever met.
At twenty-four, Deedle was the younger of the two. By general consensus, John Deedle was the best mechanic on the base. Some swore he was the best in the Army. He was quick to diagnose problems, knew all the special tools and parts, and could, if asked, even though it was against Army procedures, disassemble and rebuild, fashioning parts if need be to fit any engine, transmission, or rotor component.
Marcus Warner was twenty-six and had been married, but was now divorced. He had no children and his wife had since remarried, so he had no obligations that would detract from his being a team member. Marcus Warner’s mother had been born in Italy and immigrated to the U.S. when she was twelve. He grew up speaking Italian and English, but demonstrated a flair for languages early in his life. After he joined the Army he went to its language school at Presidio. He was fluent in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. But, since the Army had no particular need for any of those languages, he applied for, and was accepted into, the helicopter maintenance course. He had pulled two tours in Iraq, and was now a technical inspector for the school’s fleet of aircraft.
SERGEANT FIRST CLASS WILLIE STARK
Willie Stark was thirty years old. An avionics specialist, Stark could practically build a radio from scratch. He not only knew all the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of any radio, he could read and send messages in Morse code. Stark, whom others referred to as an “electronics geek,” was a wizard around radios and computers, but was too shy to have much experience with women. He had never been married, and had never even had a serious relationship with a woman.
SERGEANT DEON PRATT
Deon Pratt, twenty-five, was a powerfully built black man who was an instructor in the Escape and Evasion course at Fort Rucker. The consummate warrior, Deon was skilled in hand-to-hand combat. He was also an expert in firearms and explosives. Deon had won a Silver Star in Afghanistan for killing fifteen enemy fighters and rescuing, under fire, his captain and first sergeant who had been wounded and were trapped beneath a collapsed building. Jake had thought long and hard about including a combat expert, but he realized that if there was a complete breakdown of civilization, Sergeant Pratt would be a good man to have on his side.
SERGEANT JULIE NORTON
Sergeant Norton was Karin’s recommendation. She worked in the hospital with Karin, primarily as a clerk, but the beautiful twenty-two-year-old black woman was an organizing genius, an efficiency expert who had taken the post hospital from a barely functioning mess to one of the best-organized hospitals in the Army.
Julie was from a mill town in Georgia, and when she was still in high school, she volunteered to work in the poorest sections, holding fund-raisers to buy food, tutoring the young, helping single mothers to cope. One day playing softball with some of the children, she saw two thugs attack an older woman who had just cashed her Social Security check. While others stood by doing nothing, Julie took the ball bat and drove both of them off before they could get the money.
So far, Jake had not shared his idea of forming a survival team with anyone except Karin and Clay Matthews. He was very familiar with the people he was considering, respected all of them, and knew that they respected him. And although he had not yet asked them to join him, he was certain that they would come if asked. In fact, he was so certain, that he had not considered anyone else.
The ringing phone surprised Jake. As there was no business being conducted anywhere on the base, the telephones had been quiet.
“Environmental Flight, Major Lantz,” he answered, mouthing the Army answering formula of name, rank, and unit, even though none of it mattered any longer.
“Jake? Have you heard?” Even in Karin’s quiet voice, Jake could hear the fear coming through.
“Have I heard what?”
“There were three nuclear bombs detonated day before yesterday, one in Boston, one in New York, and one Norfolk, Virginia.”
“What! How do you know?”
“Dr. Urban has a shortwave radio. He picked up a radio station in Canada.”
“And the Canadian station said there were three nukes here?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t just here. There were bombs in England, France, Germany, Spain, and Israel too.”
“What are the casualties here?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t heard. But it has to be several million. Jake, the worst has happened, the absolute worst.”
“Come to my office, Karin. Bring Sergeant Norton. I’m going to call the others. I think it is time we assembled our team.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jake had invited everyone on his team to come to his house for dinner. Since it was getting increasingly more difficult to come by food, the meal would have been incentive enough, even if they hadn’t been interested in his idea of a survival team.
Jake served Meals Ready to Eat—or MREs. He also had several containers of fresh water, having taken that precaution before the water stopped running. There was no electricity in his house, but there were several candles
