Chapter 6

Jim sent the GPS coordinates for the truck and APC park to headquarters and asked for an explanation. He did point out that these were not USNA vehicles. He was told to stay hidden while a check with other departments was made.

It took less than 30 minutes for a message to come back that these were Russian troops and an immediate investigation was underway as to how they got where they were. In the meantime, Jim, Jane, and Ajax should move as fast as possible away from their current location. For safety, they needed to be at least 15 miles away. A neutron bomb was to be delivered by cruise missile at noon tomorrow, and that was going to kill all living beings for a 10-mile radius.

The equipment would be unharmed and recoverable for USNA uses an hour after the bomb goes off. Resources were too valuable to waste under the current circumstances, so a crew would be sent to recover the vehicles and fuel after the Russians were all dead. There was one more question: did Jim want one of the vehicles for his own use? No firm answer was needed for a few days.

One advantage of Jim’s crew having a vehicle was that they could search the open desert much more quickly with one, but fuel could become a problem. That was a problem yet to be solved. The disadvantage of Jim’s crew having a vehicle was that they would immediately become obvious to anyone who happened to glimpse them. That was a question that only Jim could decide.

It occurred to Jane that the fuel problem could be solved by hooking up a transporter so that fuel could be delivered from headquarters directly into the vehicle’s fuel tank. That would mean that the vehicle would always have fuel whenever it was needed. Jim relayed Jane’s idea to headquarters for them to consider. The idea was declared a perfect solution to that problem, and they wondered why no one had thought of it before.

Jim led his crew away from the proposed bomb target right away. He was going at least 20 miles if they could manage it simply to be out of the way of an accident. At an average of 2 MPH, it was going to take 10 hours of walking to get as far as Jim wanted, so they would be walking tomorrow, also. He didn’t want to take the chance of walking across open country at night, even though they did have the night-vision goggles.

They reached Jim’s desired 20-mile separation before noon, so they relaxed and waited for the report from headquarters that they could safely return to the park. They had decided to take a truck as a vehicle: they did not expect to encounter anything that would threaten them enough to need an APC. In any case, the people at headquarters wanted them to take a look to insure that the neutron bomb had done its job. If not, a more conventional attack by paratroopers would be used, and they wanted to avoid that if at all possible. It would simply attract too much attention!

The walk back to the bombing site was pretty dull, except they did see a dead rattlesnake and a couple of dead jackrabbits as they traveled. It was convenient that one of the jackrabbits was found where they decided to camp, so Ajax had his supper delivered to him, so to speak. It was a conventional stop of food, sex, and sleep for the two humans. They both woke the next morning in good spirits and quickly ate breakfast and were on their way.

Other than a complete lack of live humans to be found at the bomb site, the place was pretty much as they had left it. Oh, there was a hole in the canvas covers near the center of the site and one badly damaged truck that was right under the impact point of the cruise missile. That was all, but Jim suggested that the recovery squad from headquarters hurry up before the odor of decaying bodies got to be too much to stand.

He was told to select the truck they wanted and to drive it to a place north of Elpas where they would find a crew to make the necessary changes and do the installation of the fuel transporter. They found a closed truck rigged as an ambulance with two bunks inside, so that was the one they chose. All of those first aid supplies might come in handy at some time.

Jim could drive, but Jane couldn’t, so that was the first item on the agenda. The truck had power steering, power brakes, and an automatic transmission, so it was easy for Jane to learn to use it. The Cyrillic lettering on the instrument panel was no problem when headquarters sent them a packet of stickers to relabel the panel. It was a little tricky at first, but Jane learned to drive well enough in a few days. She still tended to over-steer at times, but that was not a problem with no other vehicles on the road.

It took them only three days to reach the rendezvous point with Jane doing most of the driving. The big problem was when they encountered fallen bridges, but Jim took over for that short stretch. They never trusted a bridge, even if it had not fallen in, because they could see wide cracks in the concrete structure of the bridge. It was this messed up infrastructure that had done much to slow the recovery of the country.

After the recovery team had a chance to look at the Russians and their vehicles, it was decided that further searching for invaders was beyond the scope of what Jim and his crew were designed for. Therefore, regular military groups, mostly Special Ops. Forces, were sent to scour the desert for more invaders. This was just too serious a problem for one small detachment to be responsible for.

It took a week to get all of the modifications made in the ambulance, including a new paint job to eliminate the Russian markings and the huge red crosses on the sidepanels. However, once that was done, Jim and his crew were back in business. They decided to head for what had once been California on the original Interstate 10. That skirted most of the mountains, so they should not have much to worry about as to steep grades. The only major river they had to cross was the Coldo, and that should not be too much of a problem with the strength of the drought. Once they hit the desert, they would have high winds to contend with, but they could just wait them out.

They started out on the usual clear day without a cloud in the sky. The temperature rose quickly, and the wind began to blow more forcefully than they were used to. Jane was driving, Jim was riding shotgun, and Ajax was lounging on the floor to the rear. There was a passageway between the driver’s compartment and the rest of the truck, so they did not have to go outside to move about between the two sections.

Jane fought the steering wheel for a while, but she tired fast in the cross wind they were experiencing. Jim took over for a while, but the truck was being buffeted so much that they decided to stop before the truck was turned over by an especially strong wind gust. Jim parked with the rear of the truck pointed into the wind so that the windshield would not be abraded by grains of sand. It was too early for their normal nightly stop, but travel had become too dangerous to continue.

Ajax wanted to go outside, but he changed his mind when he stuck his nose into that wind. He jumped back away from the open door, and that settled that! Ajax slept, and Jane and Jim amused themselves with sex until time for supper. Ajax had to put up with dog food from headquarters, but he accepted the necessity with some grace. He ate and lay back on the floor to sleep while Jim and Jane returned to the wider bed that had replaced the two cots.

All three woke up about dawn, and Ajax was probably the most happy that the wind had died down. He made a trip outside while the humans used the chamber pot that Jane had found somewhere. The humans ate a quick breakfast from food supplied by headquarters, but Ajax was not hungry. He went back to sleep while Jim took over the driving chores.

There were several drifts of sand over the road, and the road was completely clear in other places, so he and Jane decided that a more experienced hand was needed at the wheel. As before, they passed within sight of small towns and villages, but they appeared to be deserted. However, the one they currently approached seemed to have a small population.