Chapter 3

Year Two: Day Six: Saturday

I had collapsed into a chair in Irene's office - my thoughts in a jumble. In a clearer time my mind would have easily sorted this out but here I was now thinking the worst. Sam's reassurance that nothing was amiss was my life ring at the moment. Her parting words that — 'you have nothing to worry about, believe me, not about her anyway' — only added to my sense of confusion, especially considering the fact that Kari was here in the dispensary at this moment being examined.

I tried to calm myself — but the loss of Julie was just too recent. My mind was in a panic and my gut felt like it had a giant hand twisting my insides into a pretzel. My gut fears had usually ended up real and there was no way I could ignore them; irrational or not, they had to be dealt with.

As I fought to regain my balance my mind kept focusing on the horrific events surrounding of Julie's death. My guilt-ridden mind had often revisited that terrible incident, searching for some elusive clue, some key event, something that I should have seen, and something else I could have done, anything that could have prevented Julie's death. My rational mind realized that even with the new procedures in place I couldn't keep it from happening again if I couldn't understand exactly what I missed then.

Thinking back I remembered that the time preceding Julie's death had been euphoric, almost heady. Following months of hard work the second small class of aviators had graduated, Julie among them. She was rightly proud of her accomplishments and I was doubly proud of her. I had both the pride that a husband feels for his wife's accomplishments and the pride a teacher experiences when he has a student that he knows will surpass his own ability. I couldn't help but tell her of my feelings and we both had tears in our eyes as I pinned on her wings. Her love for flying was such that when we were flying together it was almost sexual. Our bond had strengthened in those last days of her pilot training to the point that the other wives had started teasing us about it.

It was a turbulent time of transition as our community grew beyond our small base at Whiting. The next community we added was Hurlburt Town, which was the former Hurlburt AFB. With Hurlburt Town so close to nearby Eglin AFB and with so many valuable military assets on that larger base we felt it necessary to create a small armed presence on Eglin. Thus the first security detachment was formed. Some of the original survivors found at Eglin AFB returned to Hurlburt Town and formed the nucleus of that group.

Almost as soon as Hurlburt Town had a bare minimum population we began to find large numbers of farmers and fishermen in many of the small bayous of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Large swaths of land there that had very sparse populations must have been ignored by whatever caused the disappearance of people during the collapse. It was decided that nearby Keesler AFB was a good location for the town that would become central to many of these survivors. Enough people from these areas had prior military experience to support their own self-defense force and form the second detachment which was stationed to protect the valuable military assets at the nearby Seabee base at Gulfport.

It was at this time that the renegades began to show up in the area. Air patrols of newly armed fighter aircraft fought off and mitigated the threat of the renegades so quickly and effectively that it was decided to place a single fighter aircraft on alert at each base.

Even before the settlement of Keesler was completed another area in rural eastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia was found that had a relatively large number of survivors. Those lumbermen and farmers living in this area became the nucleus of the settlement of Rucker Town on the fixed wing Cairns Army Airfield which was a part of the large Army training complex at Fort Rucker, Alabama. So many of the men in those areas were former members of the Army and National Guard who had seen recent action in Iraq and Afghanistan that the security detachments were increased and added to both Tyndall AFB south of Eglin and Kingsville NAS in Texas. These distances were so great that they put many of these soldiers in the detachments away from home for long periods at a time. It was decided at that point to rotate the detachments between the five bases with a rest period at the end of each twenty-week rotation.

All of this happened relatively quickly. Flight tempo was at an all time high as we trained flyers, searched for new survivors and provided logistic flights to the new towns and bases. It is often during such times that slip-ups occur. At the time Jacob Hill was picked up on a routine single survivor rescue nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After the fact we found that Jacob was one screwed up individual - a psychopath with a history of violent behavior.

Looking back on it after the fact I saw that conflict followed Jacob Hill wherever he went. First he was unhappy about his assignment and argued that he would be better suited working on small engines in the motor pool. Two days later the electricity for all of Rucker Town went down due to Jacob's inattention to detail on that job. An ass chewing by Lon Michaels, a retired Marine Sergeant Major who was the acting mayor of Rucker Town left Jacob red faced and spewing obscenities. He eventually apologized and was sent back to work. Nothing was thought of it as too much work and too few people meant that tempers often flared.

Unbeknownst to anyone Jacob started plotting his revenge after that ass chewing. I wasn't able to find the exact details of Jacob's action after that but during the next thirty days he managed to secure weapons, including several stun grenades stolen as the militia moved weapons stored at nearby Fort Rucker proper to a safer facility in Rucker Town.

I think Jacob first came across Julie during another spell of duty with the base militia. Jacob was part of a group towing army helicopters to a permanent storage area onboard Rucker Town and during one of these trips he may have crossed Julie's path as she flew a routine transport flight into the base. I wasn't able to find out why Jacob fixated on Julie but it is plain that for some reason revenge included her kidnapping.

I wasn't able to find the catalyst that caused Jacob to make his move when he did. Maybe he had been planning it all along or maybe he could see his opportunities slipping by as his time with the militia drew to a close. It is clear that he knew Julie was the standby pilot at base operations and that she was to cycle back to Whiting at the end of the week.

The timing of his actual move was excellent. Jacob approached Julie as she was driving the power cart to her aircraft for the daily pre-flight. Julie, friendly as ever, even stopped and gave him a ride out to the aircraft. I know that Jacob was seen helping her with the pre-flight which went by quickly. Julie's excitement about flying at that point was almost contagious and I'm sure she was excited to be preaching the gospel of the aviation squadron to a new acquaintance. Several people that were nearby saw an argument erupt as they finished the pre-flight. Before anyone could do anything Jacob swing the muzzle of the M-16 around and poined it at Julie.

I talked to everyone there and the next thing they saw was Jacob kicking the chocks out from under the wheels of the aircraft. I'm sure Julie must have thought of running, but where would she go? The concrete ramp was clear except for her aircraft, which was parked a hundred yards from the small operations building. I do know that she keyed the microphone of the small walkie-talkie in her hand to alert operations of the problem, and must have been unaware that her kidnapping was already being observed by the duty crew in the nearby building. Jacob, who must have been unaware that Julie had the walkie-talkie mike keyed was heard to say, "Get the fuck in the aircraft, bitch."

Those in the building heard Julie respond, "Jacob, be reasonable, where can we go? You know they're not going to let us just go flying off. As soon as we take off every pilot at Whiting is going to be in the air searching for us. They've scouted every airfield in six hundred miles and as soon as we land they'll know where we are."

At that point Jacob must have seen Julie holding the mike key because he responded, "Drop that fucking radio and get going, bitch. Get in the plane, I don't have all day. By the time they get anything in the air, we'll be back on the ground and under cover. Let's move it." After that Jacob was seen pushing the gun into Julie's ribs.