“There never were any appointments, Woolser lied.”
He opened his cell phone and punched in a number. “Activate Project Ark,” he said, “threat level one, event type meteor storm, authorization Yankee, Zulu, Zulu, Omega.” He closed his phone and looked straight at me.
“Okay, Carl, I need to get you out of here,” he said, “and into some place safe.”
“You don’t even know me,” I replied. “I’m not the kind of person you think I am. I’m probably headed back to prison. You’re better off not being around me.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Carl, it’s going to be okay.” I pulled back from him and gave him a nasty look. “Sorry,” he said holding his hands up in the air. “It’ll never happen again.” He sat back and stared at me some more. After a long pause he said, “So tell me how you ended up in prison.”
“It’s another long story,” I replied.
He glanced at his watch and briefly looked around the bar.
“I’ve got some time,” he said.
I don’t know why, but it just felt good to get all of it out in the open… finally.
After I finished, I told him, “So I’m not the kind of person you are looking for. We done?”
“Actually, you’re exactly the kind of person I’m looking for,” he said. “You can call me John,” as he held out his hand and smiled.
I shook his hand thinking, Yeah, right! What kind of nut case thinks I’m a valuable person? “Look,” I said, “being close to me can be dangerous. There are some horrible people who are going to be looking for me. You’re better off not being around me.”
He paused for a moment thinking about what I had said. “All things considered, I’ll take the risk,” he replied. John waved for the bartender and pulled a fifty out of his pocket. “This cover it?” The bartender grinned and nodded. “If anyone asks, you didn’t see him here.”
John helped me up and we headed for the front door. As John opened the door, he stopped and backed into me, closing the door to a small crack.
“What are you doin’?” I asked.
John looked down at my travel bag. “You got anything in there you can’t live without?”
“Change of clothes and shaving stuff, why?”
“Take a look,” he said as he opened the door a little more.
Men in dark suits were walking out of the hotel and looking around followed by several men in dark blue jackets with U.S. Marshal printed on the back and the sleeves.
“Oh Christ!” I said. “I thought they would wait ‘til I got back to California.”
“Your travel bag is a dead giveaway,” he said. “Leave it here.” He pulled out his cell phone, punched in a number and started giving directions. A dark limo pulled away from the front of the hotel, came down the street and wheeled around the corner just past the bar. “Let’s go,” he said. We walked out the door and casually moved away from the hotel and around the corner to the waiting limo. As we climbed in, John told the driver to go back to the airport. He speed dialed his cell phone and said, “We’re twenty minutes out. File flight plan echo and prep for takeoff.”
My head was starting to spin. I didn’t know what John was doing, but I was just grateful I wasn’t in federal custody.
I woke up to the whine of two small jet engines ringing in my ears. John sat across from me in the passenger cabin of his Learjet 45.
“Hell of a chance you took going on TV like that,” he said.
“I was thinking once the information was out there, they wouldn’t come after me. You know, the protection of publicity?”
John chuckled. “Yeah, more conventional wisdom that doesn’t work.”
“So what’s your interest in all of this?” I asked.
“I run a survivalist network of business owners concerned about the people we serve in our communities. The disaster agencies are ineffective and mired down in bureaucratic nonsense and regulations. At the upper levels, none of them actually care about the people they are supposed to serve. We do. The Survivalist Network is all privately run. We don’t get any financial support from the government or any of the large corporations. We are very much aware of the potential disasters that face humanity, and are prepared to do whatever it takes to make a difference.
“The government’s primary concern is the continuity of government, not the people or their lives and families. Take a look at what they did following Katrina. Thousands of people showed up offering help, food, supplies and medical care, all for free. FEMA sent them all away while people suffered and died in their homes. When official help did arrive, it was too little, too late and people were required to leave their pets behind.
“That kind of behavior is inexcusable and totally unacceptable. In a major disaster, like your meteor storm, no one from the government is actually going to help. It’s all going to be about the continuity of government, people’s lives and property be damned. You care. Otherwise, you would never have exposed yourself to that ridicule and humiliation on national television. Whether you know it or not, you’re one of us.”
I thought about what he said. I’d had enough experience with the government to realize what he said made sense. “But doesn’t the government have a responsibility to at least warn the people of the coming disaster?”
“That’s a good question,” John said. “Let me ask one in return. If our politicians are faced with a choice of spending all of the government’s resources in an attempt to protect over three hundred million people, or using its resources to protect the wealthy people who paid to get them elected, who do you think they are going to protect?”
“But it wouldn’t cost that much just to warn people,” I replied.
“No, it wouldn’t,” John said, “but what do you think people are going to demand from the government once they know something of this magnitude is going to happen? And what level of social unrest do you think will ensue?”
I knew he was right. Hell, here I was already out there starting to stir things up myself. The whole thing would spiral out of control. I hadn’t really thought it through. Given human nature, everything would have come unglued.
“The government has to deny that anything is going to happen at least long enough to get some kind of reasonable plan in place to keep the public calm,” John said. “And if they can keep the public from finding out altogether, so much the better for the politicians and their wealthy donors. Ordinary people are irrelevant; only power, wealth and influence are important to them. That’s what they will protect.”
I knew he was right, judging by how they treated me in the past. “Okay, now what?” I asked.
“We have resources you need and you have knowledge we need. Together we can make a difference. You interested?” John asked.
Here I was again, back to fighting the system, a place I swore I’d never be again. But, with the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service looking for me, there weren’t really any other attractive offers on the table.
“So what got you into the survivalist thing?” I asked.
“Fair question,” John replied. “I grew up in Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley not far from Los Angeles. My mom was a nurse working the night shift at the Veterans Hospital. A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit at six in the morning on February 9th, 1971. My mom was one of forty nine people who died in the Veterans Hospital that morning.
“The Lower Van Norman Dam was damaged along with many of the freeway interchanges. Evacuation orders were issued, withdrawn and issued again. There was no real coordinated program to help people in the area. Confusion reigned and several more people died in the panic that ensued. Major aftershocks came shortly after the earthquake adding to the damage and overall chaos.