“I thought about Site R off and on after the Day, even asked about it. All I ever got back from the government in Bluemont was blank stares and what I sensed were bullshit answers. The so-called reconstituted government at Bluemont was hunkered down in the FEMA fallback position and was told that was it. I just let it go since it was obviously a ‘don’t ask and we won’t tell’ type of issue. But there were whispered rumors. And then yesterday, your friend Linda Franklin handed me some data.” He looked off to the west. “And if confirmed, my friends, the shit is about to hit the fan big-time.”
He walked over to where his eavesdropping team members were still at work. One of them looked up at the general.
“A few more minutes, sir.”
Bob, obviously agitated, turned back to John and his friends. “Bluemont was a more recently constructed site, actually the headquarters not for the military in the event of a catastrophic attack but for a civilian agency, FEMA. Not as big a facility by a long shot—could house four or five hundred at most—but a lot more up to date. Half the distance as well to D.C. for evacuation. Rumor was it was the parking place for whenever there was a ceremonial gathering in D.C.; a member of the cabinet, a representative from each House, and some administrators were sent there just in case something really bad happened. So Bluemont seemed the logical place for those that were able to be extracted out after the attack to set up the government and start over.
“Also”—he paused for a moment and then shrugged as if the topic were no longer a secret—“there were rumors that some personnel were already up in Bluemont on the day we were attacked, taking part in some sort of drill. Those allegedly lucky ones thus became the core of the reconstituted government. At least that is how I saw it all until Linda tossed those papers in my lap last night with e-mails leaking back and forth between Bluemont and Site R.”
His features reddened slightly. “Some juicy tidbits, for this old guy, if not for how deadly it all is, I could almost laugh with how pathetic that guy in Bluemont sounded—what did they call it?—sexting or something like that to a woman in Site R?”
He shook his head. “So now we are here,” Bob said, looking back to the west. “The snow’s clearing for a moment. Go ahead and take a look. It’s just to the left of that ski slope. That’s Site R, just over there; you can see the antenna array atop the mountain.”
John squinted and looked to where Bob was pointing, and sure enough, he could see the antennas jutting up from atop a ridgeline as a snow squall drifted clear for a moment.
“Wouldn’t those antennas have fried off on the Day?” Maury asked.
“Yes, but for a place like that, they have backups and more backups stored inside. Remember it was built to come through a nuclear war. If that place is somehow operational, they got the replacements up. So that is why I decided we should park here—eavesdrop in the best way possible, with our gear literally aimed straight at them from only six miles away. I knew this to be as good a spot as any to do so and figured we’d soak up a little history as well while my tech boys listen in. Feel free to wander around, but don’t go out into the open. I doubt anyone picked us up flying in twenty feet off the road for the last fifty miles, but one can never be positive, especially when coming up on a place like this. So now we sit back, wait for my team to get up and running, and see if this is a wild-goose chase or not.”
“And if it is a wild-goose chase?” Kevin Malady asked, looking over at Bob suspiciously.
Bob sighed. “Let’s just hope this is the final straw,” he said coldly, his tension obvious to all.
“Let’s take a look around,” John announced, working to ease that tension down.
If this was indeed a wild-goose chase, what would his friend do next? For that matter, John now wondered, what would he do with whatever it was he was about to find?
John felt it best to step back for a few minutes. He motioned for his friends to follow and set off along the crest of the hill. He cautioned all to remain inside the wood line, while pointing out the statue of General Gouverneur Warren, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, his bronze figure forever gazing toward where the Confederate attack had come in.
Near Warren’s iconic statue, the gaudy and imposing two-story-high mini-castle dedicated as a monument to a New York regiment towered above them, which John suggested they not climb up. He noticed that Bob was following along.
Bob’s features were drawn, pale in spite of the icy blasts of wind whipping about the hilltop. What is he contemplating next? John wondered.
“Wish we had time to really visit this place,” Bob said. “Maybe when better times come again, we will do so.”
In the silence of a winter morning, the landscape clad in snow, visibility at times dropping as another squall came in like powder smoke obscuring this field of action, John felt a strong profound connection with this land and its history. With all that had happened, would history eventually forget this place, its location returning to primordial forest such as what greeted the first settlers a hundred years before the battle? It was a sobering thought that a day might come when their descendants a score, maybe even a hundred generations hence might walk this ground, look at the broken fragments of long-gone monuments, and ask, “What happened here?”
Already, the first signs of neglect were showing. The once heavily trodden pathways were beginning to be reclaimed by the forest. Looters and vandals had already defaced many of the monuments, stealing the bronze plaques emblazoned with the names of the gallant for their metal. Even a couple of the artillery barrels had been stolen from their cast-iron gun carriages.
The path led down the slope to a simple granite monument tucked into the southwest slope of the hill. John, with his friend Bob by his side, approached it reverently. It was the monument for the Twentieth Maine, which had held the extreme left flank of the Union army on that grim, terrible day against odds as high as six to one. Even Lee Robinson, whose ancestors had assaulted this hill, stood in reverent silence as John spoke a few words about what this place meant to him, how the commander of that regiment, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, when returning years later to this now-quiet glen declared that where great deeds are accomplished, greatness lingers and that this was indeed the vision place of souls.
All stood silent, Bob then offering that they pray together for the repose of the souls of all who fell here, both North and South, which they did, Lee openly in tears.
As the group turned to start back up the slope, General Scales interrupted their departure.
“It might be legend, it might be true,” he began, struggling to keep control over his voice. “Some claim that when the few hundred men of Maine who were sent to hold this position started to dig in, piling up rocks to form a low wall to huddle against and hearing a tidal wave of thousands screaming the rebel yell heading their way, Colonel Chamberlain stepped forward to address his men. Back then, officers actually did that kind of thing.
“Legend is that he cried out, ‘Men of Maine,’ and then went on to proclaim that perhaps only once in a century were so few men gifted to hold such responsibility, that whether their Republic lived or died now rested in their hands and their hands alone and let each man embrace that duty, if need be with his life.
“Maybe that is us this day,” Bob said. “The Republic might rest in our hands before this day is out.”
With that, he turned and started back up to the crest, shoulders braced back, walking with a purposeful stride. John followed in his wake, sensing that his friend had reached a profound decision.
As they reached the crest of the hill, Sergeant Major Bentley, who had stayed behind, came racing down to meet the group.