Chapter 2: Excerpt taken from OneThreeThirteen
LIEUTENANT COLONEL BILLY HAMILTON, Watch Commander for the night, ordered the men and women under his command to remain at their posts. He then went into the Base Commander’s office, took out his Air Force issued service revolver, put it to his right temple, and pulled the trigger.
Stunned workers rushed for the office concerned about the discharged weapon and what might have happened. Unfortunately, Madison chose that particular moment to kick open the door. “What the hell are you people doing just standing around? Don’t you know what’s happening out there?” Madison yelled. His fury resonating in every word. When the stunned workers didn’t respond to his questions, Madison’s tone became more malevolent. “We, and by ‘we’, I mean this Base is under attack! Has anyone notified Washington?”
These people, he thought, were about as helpful as cardboard cutouts. “Damn it! Where’s the Watch Commander?”
As a furious Madison stood in the middle of the room breathing fire, the group of stunned Central Command workers parted slowly revealing a path to the Base Commanders office where Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington stood with her service revolver drawn and aimed in Madison’s direction.
Staff Sergeant Lucinda Washington, a small-town girl from Fairhope, Alabama, who had enlisted in the Air Force at the age of eighteen in order to help support her family of twelve siblings, wasted no time in assuring the tall muscled intruder that they were well aware of the circumstances.
“I can assure you, whoever you are, Lucinda said arching her right eyebrow that we have a handle on the situation, and we’re perfectly aware of what’s happening outside this office.” Leveling the gun at a point directly in line with Madison’s heart, she demanded, “Name, rank, and serial number. And then you can ask questions once we verify who you are.”
Madison already extremely agitated at having left Officer’s Row without engaging the enemy, was at his boiling point. And the way this staff sergeant was addressing him wasn’t helping matters one bit. The lack of respect in her voice was being duly noted.
Madison took a step forward as a challenge, to the young female Staff Sergeant, and a glop of mud fell to the floor with a loud plop. Lucinda’s finger tightened around the gun’s trigger. Sally Arnold, a close friend of Lucinda’s sucked in her breath and took a step back. She knew Lucinda was quite capable of pulling the trigger.
Madison looked deep into the eyes of the young Black woman holding the gun. Sized her up in a few seconds, noting how she held her body and the gun. He then took into account that the Staff Sergeant had no way of knowing who he was since he was shirtless and covered in mud. Standing his ground, he answered her in a much calmer tone than he was feeling – Colonel Jim Madison, 161st Airborne Brigade, serial number, FR13545966.
With her left hand, Lucinda motioned for Buck Sergeant Tim Shaffer to input Madison’s information into Andrew’s centralized database and run a check on the muddy mess of a man standing in front of her.
The entire room stood by in acute anticipation, waiting for the results. Neither Madison nor Lucinda broke eye contact. Not even when the printer started spitting out the results of its search on one Colonel Jim Madison. “It’s OK, Lucinda, yelled the Buck Sergeant. He is who he says he is. He’s one of us!”
Doing his best to keep his temper in check, Madison moved a couple of paces closer to the Staff Sergeant, and asked through clenched teeth.
“Sergeant, what’s your status?”
“Sir, I believe Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, tonight’s Watch Commander, has just committed suicide in General Thomas’ office, Sir.” Madison let out a quiet, “Shit!”
Pointing to one of the scared faces standing behind Lucinda, he said, “You! What’s your name?”
“Airman Billy Towers, sir.”
“Well, Airman Billy Towers, you take one other person and the two of you check on Lt. Colonel Hamilton. Shaffer, you try and raise Washington and let them know what’s going on here. The rest of you back to your posts. And for God’s sake, take off those damn name tags and insignias, he emphasized by tapping Lucinda’s name tag with his forefinger. I don’t want the enemy knowing your names and ranks. Sergeant! You’re with me.”
Lucinda holstered her service piece and began briefing Madison as they hurried down a long narrow hallway marked ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ to a secured elevator leading to the ‘War Room’ located under Central Command.
The news, he learned, was bad. Andrews had been caught completely off guard.
From preliminary reports and the information Lucinda provided, Madison was able to piece together what had happened.
At fifteen hundred hours three squadrons had departed for Washington in order to take part in the newly elected president’s parade. This he already knew because he’d taken part in the ceremony celebrating the squadron’s participation. With the departure of the three squadrons, the base had gone on ‘stand down.
At twenty-one hundred hours (nine p.m.) Lt. Colonel Hamilton had received a dispatch from Britain’s Prime Minister requesting air support for the RAF, which the dispatch said was under heavy assault.
Lucinda had watched as Hamilton had refused to sign off on the dispatch noting that ‘Nervous Nelson’ strikes again. Hamilton had even going so far as to draw a small quivering ghost figure at the bottom of the memorandum. It was his way of getting across, without putting it in writing, what everyone already knew, that Prime Minister William Nelson was a bit of a nervous Nelly, having had the US needlessly scramble fighters to England over the slightest threat.
Elected after his predecessor, David Cameron’s assassination, Nelson was a very jittery man in part because of the increasing number of terrorists’ attacks that had taken place in London during the past few months.
Hamilton, Lucinda explained, had dismissed the dispatch, because there had been so many dispatches of late, all of them false alarms. Madison wondered what he, himself, would have done right about then, if he’d been in Hamilton’s shoes.
At twenty-two hundred hours (ten p.m.) Hamilton had received notice that the USS Carrier Nimitz, patrolling the waters off the English Channel, had come under attack.
Hamilton had ordered a yellow alert knowing that the USS Nimitz, with her heavy guns, fighter planes, and surface to air missiles, was well equipped to take care of herself.
Failing to see the forest for the trees, so to speak, Hamilton had chosen not to wake General Thomas, fully expecting that the Nimitz would stamp out any attack in short order. So, instead of scrambling Andrew’s few remaining active duty forces, he had printed out the transmissions and had Lucinda place them on General Thomas’ desk for review in the morning.
The final straw occurred at twenty three hundred hours (eleven p.m.) when Check Points E and F — the two check points that guarded entrance to the base’s military housing areas had not checked in as scheduled.
Hamilton, at least, had the presence of mind to send out two MP’s to see whether or not the guards were asleep on duty or otherwise engaged.
At twenty-three fifty when the MPs had not reported back and Check Points E and F were still silent, Hamilton had ordered Lucinda and her staff to start calling Andrews’ other Check Points. When neither Check Point G or A responded to Lucinda’s call Hamilton sent out a second set of MPs.
He then had Lucinda call General Thomas’ secure line. No response. That’s when, according to Lucinda, Hamilton broke into a cold sweat and went into panic mode.
“Recheck his schedule and call him again.”
“We should bring the base up to a Level Three Red Alert, Lucinda had warned him.”
“No. Not yet. If there’s nothing’s wrong out there, it’ll be my ass.”
“I think there’s something definitely wrong. According to the General’s schedule, he was planning on spending the night at home, with his wife, preparing for the flight to Washington in the morning for the Inauguration.”
“Call him again, this time if he doesn’t answer, send a group of MPs to his house and have them pound on the door until he does.”
At twenty-four hundred hours, all hell broke out on the Base.
By
Eliza D. Ankum
Author of
Flight 404
Ruby Sanders (The Ruby and Jared Saga Book 1)
Jared Anderson (The Ruby and Jared Saga Book 2)
OneThreeThirteen – A Presidential Agent Novel Series
Dancing With the Fat Woman
Thou Shalt Eat Dust
A Woman’s Voice: Book of Poems
STALKED: By Voices
The Hunt For Red November 