The Army Comes Calling (5 page)

     The door gunner was different this time. The pilot and co-pilot never left the bird. The same colonel and major stepped onto the dirt and met John and Frank in the clearing.

     They stopped five feet apart. To Sarah, watching on the monitors, it looked a lot like old western movies. The bad guys and the sheriff meeting in the middle of Main Street, while the sheriff warned the bad guys to behave themselves or suffer the full wrath of the law.

    In this case, the Army represented the bad guys.

    “Colonel my name is John Jacoby. I’m the head of security for the people in this compound. I assume you are authorized to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government?”

     “Mr. Jacoby, I’ll have you know I
am
the U.S. government.”

     John smiled and caught the colonel off guard. He was expecting to see fear in John’s eyes. Instead he got a smile. He was briefly set aback.

     “Now, colonel, I feel I need to warn you. If you negotiate with us I think you’ll be quite agreeable with our terms. If you fail to negotiate you’ll leave with nothing. Absolutely nothing. I would imagine you’d have a hard time explaining that to your superiors.”

     “I have no superiors. This is my operation.”

     John was unswayed.

     “Come now, colonel. We all have superiors. Now then, the choice is yours. We can negotiate and you can take your trophies back with you, or you can leave empty handed. Your call. It doesn’t matter to me either way.”

     The colonel was a hard case, but he was also an intelligent man. He assumed that the men in front of him wouldn’t be so bold unless they knew something he didn’t.

     So the colonel blinked first.

     “Go on.”

     “First, you have me at a disadvantage. This is Frank Woodard, my assistant and chief of operational security. You have our names. We’ll need yours if we are expected to negotiate in good faith.”

     “I am Colonel Travis Montgomery. This is Major Jim Koziol.”

     “Why do you want our animals, Colonel Montgomery?”

    “Eminent domain, Mr. Jacoby. We have the legal right according to federal law to take possession of personal property for the greater good of the nation. In this case, your livestock will be moved south about a hundred miles, where it will be turned over to trained specialists who will ensure they multiply quickly. The overall goal is to repopulate our meat supply so that all of our citizens can benefit from them, instead of a select few.”

     “And for all of our efforts in cultivating the herd to this point… Our foresight and planning, and all the investment we put into getting these animals through the last eight years, that means no special consideration for us?”

     “You will be given the same allotment of meat as everyone else, when the time comes to distribute it.”

     “I’m afraid that’s not good enough, colonel. You see, we are not a greedy group by nature. We’ve already shared our animals on two prior occasions. Had you asked, we’d have been more than willing to share with you for your project.

     “However, there is a right way and a wrong way to ask for assistance. One does not simply make demands and try to bully others. And I’m not a lawyer, but don’t eminent domain laws apply strictly to land and real property?”

     “They apply to whatever I deem is best for the people under my control.”

     “And therein lies the problem, Colonel Montgomery. What’s best for you and your mission does not represent what’s best for the people under
my
control. It appears that we are not too different from that regard. Except that I hold better cards than you do.”

     The colonel turned red and appeared ready to explode. But he kept his composure and asked, “Meaning what?”

     “As I said, it was our intention from the beginning to share with others to help repopulate the livestock in the area. But if you take any action to take the animals by force, either now or in the future, we will immediately shoot all of them dead. Every cow, every pig, every chicken. You’ll be able to have a hell of a barbeque. But you’ll never be able to carry out your project.”

     “That’s not a negotiation. It’s an ultimatum.”

     “Perhaps you’re right. But let’s remember who it was that stormed in here uninvited and made the first demand. A totally unacceptable demand, I might add.”

     “I can have a battalion of troops here in four hours. We can roll right over you.”

     “You could. But it wouldn’t do you any good. Before you even made it past the fence you will have failed in your mission. We’ve got people permanently stationed in each of the barns, with automatic weapons and instructions to kill the animals at the first sign of assault.

     “So yes, it may be a demand that you’re not quite happy with accepting. But as I said, I hold all the cards and I’m in a position to make that demand.”

     “What if I take you both into custody and try you for treason?”

     John pointed to the surveillance camera on the wall.

     “As soon as any of your men make a move to do that, you’ll start hearing automatic gunfire from within the compound. They tell me it’ll all be over within two minutes, tops.”

     The colonel seemed to chew on his options for several seconds.

     “Very well. I accept your terms. What are your demands for the process?”

     “None of your people are allowed in the compound. You’ve already had a bird’s eye view of what’s in there. There’s no need to investigate further just to satisfy your curiosity. We will build a temporary holding pen where your helicopter sits now. We will herd your share of the cattle and pigs into the pen. The poultry will be put in a separate cage. You may come back in forty eight hours to pick up your animals. Bear in mind, colonel, that we will have snipers in the forest. They will have their weapons trained on the animals and will shoot them dead if you try to take more than we’ve bargained for. And again, if you send in a recon team or attempt to assault the camp, all of them, inside and out, will be shot dead.”

     John was surprised to see the colonel soften a bit. It was obvious that he was used to getting his way. But he was also a man who accepted that things couldn’t always be solved by force alone. Sometimes wheeling and dealing was necessary.

     “We will abide by your demands. The government, believe it or not, is trying to play it straight this time. We want to win the trust back that the American people haven’t had in the government for many years now. We want to go back to being by the people for the people.”

     “Which is why you came in and demanded our livestock to begin with?”

     “Touché, Mr. Jacoby. We took a firm stance because we assumed you wouldn’t be willing to share.”

     “We’ve always been willing to share. All you had to do was ask.”

     The four men shook hands, and the colonel reboarded the helicopter. The major said a few words to the driver of the lead vehicle, who restarted his truck and used the open area to turn around. One by one, the other drivers followed his lead, and within four minutes all of them were on their way back to the highway.

     As John and Frank watched the helicopter lift off again and head south, Frank asked his friend, “You don’t trust them, do you?”

     “Oh, hell no. I’ve lived for sixty two years without trusting the federal government. I’m too old to start now. We need to remain on full alert and put spotters in the woods, just to be safe.”

Chapter 8

     It had once been the jewel of the Air Force Logistics Command, and one of the largest military bases in the world. Huge C-5 cargo planes, each one almost as long as a football field and higher than a six story building, once thundered down its runways.

     In its last years, after the Air Force was forced to reduce its size due to budget constraints, Kelly Air Force Base, in south San Antonio, was forced to close its gates for good. The airplanes were transferred to other Air Force bases, and the old base threatened to become a blight on the city.

     But the city of San Antonio stepped up and took over the place. Mammoth hangers became warehouses for civilian firms, and buildings were renovated and reused for a variety of other purposes.

     The area was renamed The Port of San Antonio and became one of the most successful industrial areas in south Texas. It was a shining example of how a city could absorb a former military base and make it its own.

     But that was before a meteorite named Saris 7 collided with the earth and destroyed most of mankind.

     Now the former base had returned to its roots, seized by the federal government once again.

     Oh, it started out with the best of intentions. At first it was a forward operating base for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA made it its mission to find the survivors in the San Antonio area and to help them as much as they could. They distributed stockpiled seeds and showed survivors how to plant crops to sustain themselves and their families.

     It was the best FEMA could do in a world which no longer had an industrial base. It no longer had manufacturing plants or corporate farms, or ways to distribute food on a large scale.

     Before FEMA stepped in, the area had become one pockmarked with small farming operations, family affairs, really, which grew enough crops to keep a handful of people alive and not much more.

     The seeds and the training were a godsend to survivors who’d been through so much already, and were desperate to eke out a meager existence to get past the worst disaster ever known to man.

     Once FEMA deemed its work done, it moved on.

     “Continue to grow your crops,” they told the residents of San Antonio. “Share your seeds with others, so they can grow their own crops. It’s by working together and sharing what we have that we can help each other get through this.”

     FEMA left the area, turning the former base over to the Army, which had no real mission other than to do what it could to pick up where FEMA left off.

     In a world where most of the people had died but where chaos lived on, a commanding general named Baker was suddenly in charge.

     Lieutenant General Lawrence T. Baker wore his three stars with great pride. He’d earned his mettle in three wars, having seen the dying days of Vietnam as a wet-eared lieutenant. He saw the early days of the Iraq war as well, before retiring from the military.

     When he hung up his uniform, he thought it was for good. Then he was recalled to active duty by the Secretary of Defense just before Saris 7 struck the earth.

     “I have no idea what your future holds, Lawrence,” the Defense Secretary told him. “All I want you to do is survive until the dust settles and the world turns warm again, and then do whatever you can do to help get the country back on its feet.”

     Actually, the recall was a godsend to Baker, for it allowed him to live in an underground bunker at Fort Hood with his family, and the families of select other high ranking military officers and NCOs. While most of the rest of the world was outside dying, this group of several hundred lived off long term rations and barrels of water. Some of the water had been stored at the top secret bunker since the cold war in the 1950s.

     General Baker was ambitious and driven, and the type of man who would follow orders the best way he could regardless of the cards he was dealt.

     And he was, at heart, a good man, intent on doing what he could to help the citizens of the decimated city of San Antonio, as well as the surrounding area.

     In the absence of marching orders on exactly how he was to accomplish that, he was left to his own devices. So he decided to turn the former Kelly Air Force Base, then Port of San Antonio, into the world’s largest agricultural center.

     The huge hangers that once held mighty aircraft were turned into monstrous green houses. Holes were cut in the metal roofs and walls, and panels of clear plastic were installed. Hundreds of truckloads of soil were trucked in from abandoned farms in the area, and mammoth growing boxes, four feet deep, were built on the hanger floors.

     The hangers and the soft ground around them would grow a variety of crops all year around, for two specific purposes. One of them, of course, was to feed the operation’s workers and their families. The other, and by far the more ambitious of the two missions, was to harvest enough seeds to get the population in the entire southern half of Texas growing their own food.

     Tomatoes, for example, were cut open and their seeds removed, in a processing plant next to Hanger 6. The tomato shells were served in the base dining facility, or were delivered by the truckload to San Antonio food banks.

     The seeds were processed and packaged and would be given to area survivors in the spring, along with instructions on how to plant and care for them.

     The one thing the center was severely lacking in was meat. Unless the entire population south of Dallas and east of Del Rio were to become permanent vegetarians, they had to find livestock to cultivate.