Prologue 2

Prologue 2

Harmon Rabb Jr.: It was highly evident that things were "out of the ordinary" in Sunset Valley as we were picked up by a taxi and shown to the property...which was still under construction at the time...with about roughly two weeks to build. While workers were till working on the fence, Mac and I were able to see that there were a lot of things going on at one time; especially inside the structure. From the outside, it was just a plain small squarish building, with not much to see... but as one looked in deeper one could see that there was a significant structure hidden from view.

There was a gate which buzzed you in...and the entrance was not visible from the gate, in fact, it was blocked off by the entire body of the structure. My hackles started to raise, this was definitely not an retirement home like Animal had told me that it was. What exactly was he and Meg up to? That's what Mac wanted to know too.

"Welcome, Colonel Mackenzie, Captain Rabb... Lieutenant Commander Harriet Sims-Roberts chirped cheerily as she disappeared around the corner of the building where we managed to see her go in through a set of double doors.

I saw Animal standing by the oven, looking over at some waffles cooking. I asked him suspiciously, "What's going on? What's the big mystery?"

He just nodded and told me to wait. "We have a lot of things to do." And then I saw SECNAV Edward Sheffield, Gibbs and another guy who I didn't know. Plus there were a few civilians that I hadn't even known were in the what I now presumed to be a bunker. Things were starting to add up big time and my blood started to run cold.

"Where's Bud and Harriet?" I asked, "What happened to his continuing therapy on his leg?" Animal looked up at me. "Evidently, Commander Roberts finished up his therapy on his prothesis leg. He seems to be functioning on all cylinders. Captain. In fact, if you want to see him, he's in the gardens doing some gardening with Harriet and trust me, Captain, if you knew what I knew about what's going down...I'm certain that we're going to need someone capable of gardening. In fact a lot of someones." That ominous comment didn't reassure me any.

The bunker was cavernous. Three floors and a top partial floor below ground...and this place was designed to take a serious bombing. Somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 10MTs. I wasn't liking what the preparations foretold.

The people who would be caught outside were no better than doomed. If what the preparations were foretelling were accurate. In fact, just the fact that SECNAV was told to be here was sending eery chills down my spine.

...and not even a day later, the headcount added yet another member of the Sunset Valley civilian population to the crowd.

It didn't seem as though SECNAV Sheffield was worrying too much. In fact, he was busy trying to do trickshots on the pool table and of course getting a rather painful result: being beaned in the head by a cue ball. I don't know how anyone can think of playing games at a time like this...

Everyone bedded down...with the understanding that it was going to take a lot of preparation before this bunker would be ready to be really and truly inhabitable. As Animal said this, he looked over at me as if to ask me silently if I was up to the task. Well, if it meant dying in a nuclear conflagration versus surviving, I'll pick the latter every time. "Count me in, sir." I piped up.

"We're going to have a meeting towards the end of the week. We'll be getting monitors installed on Tuesday, so that we can be kept ahead of the situation." As the ranking admiral in the building, Vice-Admiral Nakamura was the head military boss, 2nd in military command was RADM Chegwidden. And we were duty-bound to protect the Secretary of the Navy who was in line of succession to become President should the unthinkable happen and we lost our head of state.

I had realized that Animal had called every single one of the people he cared about to the bunker. And then on top of that he'd called in certain civilians as well...who would help rebuild the world...if it did happen. Surely humanity wasn't that stupid enough that they would start a nuclear war?

Or were they?