After two days passed by, Captain Furle had seen himself with no other choice but to assume that no help would materialize and his group was going to have to make its own arrangements. Accordingly, he sent two of the soldiers that he had available to reconnoiter the way down to the Interstate to see if help could be summoned, and failing that to search around for a vehicle, cart, or any other means for moving the nine badly injured that they still had with them. Tom, the civilian, Cynthia’s friend, had offered to go too, pointing out that two would be a perilously small number if anything happened to one of them, and he was an experienced mountain hiker. Furle had agreed, and the three departed shortly afterward. They still hadn’t returned when the helicopter arrived. By the time loading was complete there was still no sign of them and attempts to contact them by radio had failed. There could be no question of tarrying longer. Mitch ordered supplies, water, and ammunition to be left for them. Furle and a couple of the troopers stacked a selection of items in the space under the Rustler’s wing and prepared to clamber aboard as the Sikorsky revved up for takeoff. And then Cynthia, who was still on the ground with them, announced blank-faced that she would stay and wait for Tom. Apparently, they had lived together for eight years.
“Ma’am, you’re being crazy,” Furle said. “What if they don’t come back? You’ll die out here.”
“What if they do come back . . . and I’d never see him again?”
Mitch glowered down from the helicopter door. “There isn’t time for this. Grab her and put her on board,” he ordered. The three soldiers closed around her, pinning her arms, and lifted her inside forcibly over her struggling and hysterical protests. Moments later, the Sikorsky lifted off once more into the violent skies.
* * *
El Paso was about as far west as it was possible to go and still be in Texas. But at least they had made it to Texas—twenty-nine of the forty-two who had left Vandenberg in the Rustler.
The scene as the helicopter came in was like the reception center at Phoenix, but with everything on a vaster scale. A quarter of the city had been obliterated by a new crater, which had buried the former downtown area under its wall. The pilot, who seemed to have relented after being uncooperative earlier and wouldn’t be filing any complaints, said reconnaissance flights had shown an immense crater field extending westward from Phoenix and to the northeast, but he didn’t know how far. The ruins of what was left of the city were being reinforced and bombproofed, while for miles around, earthworks, bunkers, and connecting roads looking like extended military fortifications were appearing across the desert slopes and among the mountains. But it still wasn’t matching the scale of the problem. The numbers of people pouring in were even vaster, their vehicles visible everywhere in thousands, in some places pulled off the roadways in untidy sprawls stretching for miles, filling the verges and any open ground, in others tossed like the aftermath of an air strike.
They landed at what looked like a regional airport, amidst the kind of scene that was becoming familiar: demolished and damaged buildings, excavations and repairs going on around the runways. One runway appeared to be serviceable. Mangled aircraft of all types were everywhere, and the hangar buildings that had survived reasonably intact were being shored up and earthed over as protective bunkers for any that were salvageable. The air, as they climbed out of the helicopter, was hot, heavy, clammy, and oppressive.
Leaving Furle to supervise the unloading of the injured and find them some kind of temporary accommodation, Cavan and Dan left on what showed signs of being an impossible task of finding them medical attention while Alicia and Dash stayed to do what they could. The best the helicopter pilot could suggest as a lead to whoever was running things was the colonel in charge of flight operations, and Keene went with Colby and Mitch to seek him out. After some asking around they found him in the glassless but functional control tower, following the approach of an incoming aircraft on a screen connected to an Army mobile field radar located somewhere nearby. He was obviously busy, stressed, and listened to them impatiently. When Colby presented his White House papers and Presidential staff ID, the colonel seized the opportunity to have his switchboard call the office of the acting commander of the area to get rid of them. The colonel then returned his attention to the business at hand, and a guard escorted them back downstairs to wait.