He’d put as much drama into it as he could, knowing that everyone would have to be debriefed back at the depot to ensure security. One of the warehouse roofs fell in, masking the words as his radio spat something at him.
“Say again?” he said.
“Vehicles sighted in the tarmac area,” reported the excited voice. It sounded like one of the captains, but the hoods made it hard to tell.
“There are civilians running around out on the tarmac.”
“Civilians? Oh shit, he thought. “How many?”
“Maybe a dozen, sir. Looks like they were trying to get into the big building at the end. But that fire’s gonna get ‘em pretty quick.
There’re four cars out there on the tarmac, and their tires are smoking.
Whoever they are, they’re going apeshit out mere.”
Son of a bitch! Four cars? What the hell was this? Had the Fort Gillem security people screwed up? He gave the signal to his driver to move forward, right up to the fence.
“Can you drive through that fence?” he shouted to the driver. The noise of the fires was much louder than he had expected, even in the hoods.
The snake-eaters had done their job very damn well.
The driver’s hood nodded and he headed the big vehicle toward a center section of the chain-link fence, accelerating. Carrothemtalmost got his seat belt on over the MOPP gear before the big vehicle left the edge of the runway with a bang, fishtailed a couple of times on dirt and gravel, and then hit the fence at about forty-five miles an hour. The fence didn’t give; instead, it slid up over the hood and then the windshield as the Suburban plunged ahead, audibly ripping off wipers, police lights, and antennas on the way. Carrothers could hear the stuff snapping off as the fence clattered overhead, and then they were through. The driver brought the vehicle to a screeching halt at the edge of the tarmac, unable to get it over some concrete barriers lining the edge of the open area.
Carrothers piled out into a scene from a war zone. All of the DRMO buildings except the demil building were fully engulfed hi fire, and it was starting to bulge ominously. The heat and the noise were nearly overpowering. He was grateful he was in a chem suit, because those poor bastards out on the tarmac were probably starting to barbecue. There were four sedans out there, now clustered in a circle among the pallets.
There appeared to be about ten men out there, hunkering down behind their cars and under some of the larger pieces of palletized equipment to escape the rain of flaming debris and sparks. He yelled to his driver to summon the other vehicles, and then he ran toward the men on the tarmac, stumbling awkwardly in the chem suit as he tried to get through the lines of pallets while avoiding small fires on the ground. The heat was very much stronger than he had expected, and he had to duck his Plexiglas mask away when the near end of the admin building bulged out and then collapsed in a wall of flame. Behind him, the back wall of the demil building came crashing down, sending a wave of flame across the tarmac.
He could see that the fields behind the fence were also on fire.
One of the men crouching behind a pallet of propellers saw him when he was about fifty feet away and stood up. Carrothers waved at him to come ahead, waited to make sure the guy understood and was going to get the rest of them, and then began to back out of the tarmac area, very conscious of the thumps and crashes of objects coming down out of the burning sky. The Plexiglas of his mask was beginning to singe his cheeks in the intense heat, and he could see that the running men were having trouble breathing as all the oxygen at ground level was sucked into the conflagration surrounding them.
There were two more Suburbans nosed in at the uprooted fence by the time the running men converged on Carrothers. The MPs had piled out of the vehicles to let the unprotected men climb in. A minute and a half later, they were all back out on the runway, where even at five hundred yards there were bits of flaming debris raining down out of the spark-filled smoke cloud boiling overhead. Carrothers could hear the faint sound of distant sirens as he pulled his hood off. He yelled at one of the captains to execute the chemical perimeter operation, then walked over to the first of the other Suburbans, where some of the civilians were opening doors and looking cautiously out. Their faces were smudged with soot, and they all seemed to be having trouble getting their breath back. Out on the tarmac, the first of the cars’ gas tanks let go in an orange blast, followed immediately by another one.
Carrothers signaled two large MPs to come with him. They wordlessly assumed covering positions with twelve gauge military riot guns held at port arms across their chem suits. A couple of the civilians froze when they saw the shotguns.
As Carrothers walked up, a fiftyish man looked around. He was bent over, coughing his lungs out, while trying to wipe his glasses with a handkerchief. Behind him the DRMO roared into fiery extinction.
“I’m Brigadier General Carrothers, U.S. Army Chemical Corps,” Carrothers announced over the noise of the fire. “Who are you people and what hi the hell were you doing in there?”
The man tried to speak but then erupted into another fit of coughing that bent him almost in half. When he had control of himself, he pulled out a leather credential case. “Special Agent Frank Tangent, FBI,” he wheezed, showing Carrothers his credentials. “Did you say Army Chemical Corps?” ‘
“Yes, I did.” The agent wiped his forehead and looked back over at the destruction going on behind them. “Well, sir,” he said, coughing again, “I guess you and I need to talk.”
41
Carson pulled off the interstate into a rest area at a little after 3:00 a.m. He was about fifty miles out of Atlanta on Interstate 85, which ran northeast toward Greensboro and the Carolinas. He had been having trouble keeping his eyes open as the adrenaline finally wore off. He parked the pickup at the far end of the parking area, backing it hi to conceal the government license plate, and shut it down. He leaned back in the seat and immediately sat straight back up. He put his right hand between the windbreaker and the back of his shut and felt the large wet stain across his back. Jesus, he thought. This is all I need. The damned fence wire must have gotten me.
He carefully peeled the windbreaker off to see if it was stained through, and it was, but only on the inside lining. He felt his back again, and this time his hand came away with blood on it. Shit, he thought. Then he noticed the hole in the side of the windbreaker. He grabbed it, stared at it, and then turned the jacket over and found another hole on the other side. It hadn’t been the fence. Those two bastards had shot him.
He opened the truck door and got out gingerly, because now his entire back was really hurting. He slipped the jacket back on, then reached into the backseat of the truck for his trip kit, a small bag containing toiletry articles and a hand towel to use at rest stops. He locked the truck up and walked over to the facilities, which at this hour of the morning were empty. He went into a stall and took his jacket and shirt off and then his undershirt. The undershirt was soaked with blood, and the shirt was only in marginally better condition. He went back out to the sink, turned around, looked at himself in the mirror. There was a long red furrow cutting across the top of his back at a slight diagonal.
It did not appear to be very deep, but it was red and angry-looking.
Even as he watched, a thin trickle of blood seeped out on the left-hand side.
He got out the towel and tried for some hot water, but only the cold faucets worked. He wet the towel, considered putting some soap on it, decided against that, and then folded the towel into a long bandage and draped it over the cut. The stinging was intense, but then it subsided.