Judgment Day -03 Read Free Page A

been able to find suitable containers. He also transferred fuel from the red Hummer parked in front of the cabin over to the Escalade. According the digital fuel gauge on the dash, they could travel nearly five hundred miles on what was now a full tank of gas. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be quite enough to make it to Salamanca, which meant they would have to either refuel along the way or, more likely, swap to another abandoned vehicle.
    Tanner set the Smith and Wesson Model 29, .44 Magnum on the dashboard. He had yet to fire the weapon since taking it from a backwoods kidnapper hiding in an old military bunker. It was fully loaded, but after those six rounds were spent, he suspected the weapon would become about as useful as a brick. Finding ammunition for such a rare caliber would be difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, his trusty Remington 870 Police Magnum shotgun, loaded with triple-aught buckshot, sat on the floorboard beneath his legs, and more than forty unfired shells were stuffed in his backpack.
    Samantha leaned her Savage .22 Varmint rifle against the inside of the SUV door. She only had a couple of dozen rounds for the rifle, but Tanner assured her that, by the time those ran out, they would have found another box or two. With billions of .22LR rounds having been sold every year for decades, the existing supply would probably outlast mankind.
    Tanner unfolded a large map and studied it one final time. The drive from his cabin to Salamanca, New York, was almost exactly six hundred miles. His planned route would take them north along Highway 221 as far as Wytheville, Virginia. From there they would veer onto I-77 and eventually onto I-79, the latter of which would take them all the way over to Morgantown, West Virginia. At that point, they would detour around Pittsburgh, which was likely to be as hellish as Atlanta had been. The final couple of hundred miles would be traveled along two-lane highways as they snaked their way across the entire state of Pennsylvania and up into New York State.
    Unfortunately, much of the trip had to be made by interstate, thoroughfares that were not only blocked by millions of vehicles but also frequented by every imaginable danger. While he didn’t like the risk that the journey posed, Tanner accepted that the decision to go had already been made. Whether they were traveling to Virginia to take Samantha to her mother, or to New York to deliver a note to a girl who anxiously awaited her father’s return, they would have to face the world in which they lived. Danger was a part of life, now more than ever before.
    He started the Escalade and listened to the engine.
    “You hear that?”
    Samantha rolled down her window and listened.
    “I don’t hear anything.”
    “That, darlin’, is the sound of another adventure about to begin.”

    CHAPTER
    3
    President Glass stared at the phone as if was waiting for news on whether a loved one had survived a lifesaving surgery. The Secretary of Defense, General Kent Carr, had assured her that he would find Samantha. But for the past forty-eight hours, his special task force had turned up nothing. What was supposed to have taken only a few hours had now stretched into days. Somehow, Samantha had disappeared. And while President Glass drew a modicum of comfort that her daughter had been spotted alive, she couldn’t shake the dreadful worry.
    Finally, she could wait no longer. She snatched up the phone and dialed General Carr’s closed-circuit number.
    He answered on the second ring.
    “No news yet, Madam President.”
    “You said it would only take a few hours.”
    “We’re doing all we can. She’s apparently left the Atlanta area.”
    “But how? Why? Why would she run like this?”
    “My guess is she’s afraid.”
    “Of what? Our soldiers?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “What do you mean perhaps?”
    General Carr hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
    “Ma’am, I think we should meet in person.”
    “Why?