Chapter 61

I headed back toward the cafeteria for some lunch. When I got there George and Mike were just sitting down too so I sat with them.

"Jack, I don't want to butt into things that might not be my concern, but I have something I want to mention to you," Mike said.

"Mike I always want to hear whatever you have on your mind."

"George and I have talked it over, and the way we seem to be getting more and more people, we think we need to do something about it," Mike said.

When he didn't elaborate I kept quiet for a few seconds. I didn't have any idea what he had on his mind and I was sifting through mine wondering what this was about.

"We think we need to gather some more cattle before it goes wild or starves to death. We have a lot of well-fenced acreage here and plenty of feed. We even have a facility for slaughtering the livestock, and we are going through a lot of beef right now. There must be a lot of livestock that needs care around. Even if we just gathered it up and slaughtered it we would be ahead," Mike said.

"I hadn't even thought of it Mike, but I'm sure you're right. We will be growing constantly from now on. What would be the best way to secure some of the cattle?"

"The easiest way to locate it would be with a helicopter. If one of the pilots had time to just take me up to look around it would be a good start. I'd try to find cattle which were still doing pretty well and would be in good fences where we could gather them easily. If I had fairly regular use of a helicopter I could just leave some of the stock where it was and check on it every day or so. It should still be a month or two before we need to feed them. We mainly need to make sure they have water and minerals," he said.

I'll have a helicopter and a couple of pilots assigned to you for as long as you can make use of them. I need to ask you something too. When I went to Nebraska I saw a lot of corn in the fields. Do you think we could salvage anything useful by trying to harvest it?" I asked.

"I'm sure we could. If nothing else we could use it for cattle feed. There is a lot of feed here already, but more wouldn't hurt us," he said.

"I also thought about trying to get some of the stored grain around the country in grain elevators. Do you think we could have any success?"

"Probably, I've never tried to get anything out of one, but I'm sure it isn't too hard. Grain is put in them to be taken out," he said.

"I'll get you the helicopter so you can find more cattle and then we'll see about the corn and grain. The helicopter will be assigned to you for whatever you would like to do with it. If you think of something else which might help feed us or protect us don't bother to ask for permission. Use the helicopter as you see fit and don't hesitate to ask for anything else you feel you need. I won't be overworking you will I?" I asked.

"Gathering and feeding a few thousand head of cattle couldn't be nearly as hard as trying to keep up with making space for your harem," he said, and laughed.

George joined him at my expense then. I didn't mind. Mike had done a hell of a job on anything I'd asked him to do before. He and George had the examination table set up in my bedroom and it looked like it was put there when the house was built. All the partitions were gone from the other five bedrooms now and there were currently seventeen of the big beds spaced around in the freed up area, and the place didn't seem crowded at all.

I finished eating, said my goodbyes to Mike and George and headed back to the command center. When I got there I told Brenda, Clair, Seven, and Jasmine of Mike's suggestion. Jasmine said she would get him two pilots for a Little Bird. It would give him a pilot available at all times. I asked her to make sure it was fitted with long-range tanks, in case Mike wanted to search for other things.

Jasmine said in that case she would assign two helicopters and four pilots for his use. If he wanted to roam very far he would have better protection. She was also going to ask Henny to keep an A10 ready to get up quickly in case Mike needed extra support in a hurry.

The Little Birds were armed and I'd been told they could give a good account of themselves, but they were mostly for observation and recon. I guessed they could observe cows as well as enemy.

The additional assets for Mike's protection were something I wouldn't have thought of, but I was glad Jasmine had. I had come to depend on Mike and his idea about salvaging cattle and other things which were just left unattended was a valuable one.

All was still quiet out toward Arizona. All but four of the F15s had been recalled and the other Hawkeye was ready to take up the chore later this afternoon. It would have four pilots and four crewmen. That way they could rotate and stay rested. The tanker could keep them and the F15s refueled. The F15s would rotate back to base about every six to eight hours though.

Seven and I left for the guests quarters. She wanted to just go ahead and turn the women right off the bat. I didn't want to start in on it yet. I was going to hold them, but it was as far as I was willing to go right now. If we didn't get the information we wanted out of them I might even give them the drug we'd used on Melinda. I wasn't up to raping them to turn them yet.

I hadn't even thought about Melinda in days. She had gotten all our attention with her attack on the Cobra. It had turned out to be a lot of worry about nothing much, and Melinda seemed harmless now.

Hell if I wasn't mistaken she was sleeping in my quarters with Debbie, Andrea, and Paula now. I wondered if she expected a little attention from me sooner or later. If I caught her shambling around on her crutches in a T-shirt some morning I was going to give her a proper inspection and see what happened. She was a sexy little thing after all and I didn't want her to feel left out.

Who was I trying to fool? I didn't even have time to jack off lately, much less sneak a girl on crutches off to try and fuck her. Maybe things would settle down later.

Seven and I separated the captives when we got there. Putting each one in a different room. I wasn't going to let them get back together as long as I thought they had information I needed. It would mean some people would have to vacate the guest quarters, but it would just have to be done. I wasn't going to give them time to get any lies straight after I started questioning them.

Gail was the one who had tried to spout off about the Geneva conventions. She'd changed her tune remarkably. Having to go from thoughts of name, rank and serial number to the stark possibility of a firing squad must have been inhibiting. She was also sobered when we told her the male pilot hadn't made it.

She spilled her guts from the get go. They were indeed in residence at Davis-Monthan. There were about fifty people in the group. Ten were men and the rest women. Approximately thirty had been former airmen and the rest were civilians. Some had worked on the base. Twelve had been pilots and eight had been former EWOs.

There were three male and four female pilots left at Davis-Monthan. They had some minimal ground defenses, but had relied mostly on the air cover for their safety. They hadn't really ever needed any defense. No one had bothered them.

I was amazed again at what they could have been thinking. They had been safe and unmolested and had just decided to go flying around trying to force down or shoot down aircraft which weren't threatening.

The mission for the Hawkeye had been James' idea. Most of the others hadn't thought it was worthwhile and Gail really didn't seem to know how it had come to be. They didn't really have a formal leader and mostly just talked things over before doing anything.

James had been really forceful about wanting to get the Hawkeye and they had finally just gone along with him. The civilians hadn't even had any idea what it was used for. Gail seemed to think it was just her bad luck for finally agreeing to go with James and the others.

I didn't mention it was all their bad luck. I knew now I might as well just go ahead and absorb them for their own safety as well as for my safety and my needs. All they could accomplish with their committee style of leadership was more of what they'd done this morning.

They'd let one hothead talk them into risking valuable and scarce resources, not to mention nine lives, for nothing. They didn't even have any people who knew how to use the Hawkeye effectively. They could fly it of course, but I'd already found out making sense of the data a Hawkeye could gather wasn't for a beginner.

It seemed they had been like a cat watching a moving piece of twine. Finally their curiosity had gotten the better of them and they had to pounce on it. Curiosity had gotten the better of James at least, and he had goaded the rest of them into going with him.

They hadn't had any inkling there was such a large group here. They certainly didn't even consider running into surface to air missiles. She finally said they probably agreed to do it for want of anything else constructive to be doing. They had plenty of food and, they thought, plenty of protection.

"What do you think the rest of your group will do if confronted by twenty Cobras and a hundred ground troops, with ten or fifteen F15s for air cover," I asked.

"I believe they will surrender unless they think you intend to harm them after they do. They will be suspicious though, especially since James is dead," she said.

"James was trying to get a lock on the Hawkeye when the Patriot took him out. What was I supposed to do, let him shoot it down?"

"It was the only thing you could do, but it won't make it any easier for the others to swallow," she said.