Chance Encounters

Source

The pickup truck came screaming out of a side road, Johansen caught a glimpse of it in his peripheral vision. He had three choices: slam on the brakes and hope he stopped in time, accelerate and hope to get ahead of the truck, or do nothing at all.

His brain picked accelerate, as he mashed the gas pedal the Fates chose Option 3, do nothing at all. For in truth, the angles and speeds involved guaranteed that the pickup would hit Johansen's rental car, so Option 3 was the only valid choice. There was no good choice.

The truck, driven by a very drunk farmer who had just had a nasty fight with his wife, was doing 65 when it pulled onto the Baltimore Pike, and was still accelerating. The drunk never saw the car in front of him until the nose of his truck slammed into the driver's side door.

Johansen had chosen a high end rental, he could afford it. He was looking right at the nose of the Dodge Ram as it slammed into his vehicle. The side air bags deployed and knocked him silly. The world seemed to go into a violent spin as his car twisted to the right.

The car rolled once as the pickup truck hit the shoulder, causing its front suspension to collapse, causing the truck to nose under Johansen's rental just enough to flip it once. There was a small drainage ditch on the right side of the road¹ then the ground sloped up rather abruptly.

The truck spun to its left, which prevented further damage to Johansen's vehicle, rolled and landed on its roof. The farmer, killed on impact, had been thrown from the vehicle, his body was a good hundred yards down the road.

Johansen slowly opened his eyes, he couldn't see out of the left one, he tried to bring his arm up to rub whatever was in that eye away, but his arm wouldn't move. As the initial shock wore off, he felt the onset of pain.

His left hip and arm were shattered, his left foot was pinned under the impact dent made by the truck. He had a nasty gash over his left eye, the blood from which was blinding that eye. He tried moving his right arm. It moved.

He brought his hand up to his left eye, he rubbed it, it cleared somewhat. He pulled his hand away, it was very bloody. As he looked around, trying to orient himself, as he brain tried to register what was going on, he saw that his car was at an odd angle, as if he were on a slope. (Which of course he was.)

He saw his jacket on the passenger seat, "Odd, I thought I'd put that in the back ..." he muttered. He picked it up and tried to wipe the blood away from his eye. That's when he felt the cut on his forehead. He tried to raise the jacket up to put pressure on the wound, he could, but now he couldn't see.

Just before he passed out, a Maryland State Trooper came around the curve to the southwest, up the slight hill from Johansen's car. When he saw the two vehicles, and his headlights picked up something on the road further on which might have been a body, he turned on his light bar.

"Dispatch, this is Trooper Wallace, westbound on the Baltimore Pike, near Grabenstein² Road. I've got a crash, two vehicles, possible fatalities, send an ambulance."

"Copy, Wallace, we'll have one out there shortly."

Trooper Paul Wallace parked some distance between the smaller vehicle, which was up on the slope beside the highway. He left his headlights on to illuminate the scene, and left his lightbar on as well to alert oncoming traffic.

He planned to set flares as well, but first he wanted to tend to any possible survivors. The crash looked nasty. As he got closer to the scene, he thought he recognized the pickup truck, it was a big one. It looked an awful lot like the one Gil Simmons drove, that man probably should have been locked a long time ago. He had had a number of DWI citations over the past five years. Usually after fighting with his wife Cindy.

Wallace heard a moan from the smashed up sedan on the slope. He pointed his flashlight at the vehicle, looked like a single occupant. Driver's side was smashed all to hell and all of the airbags had deployed. From the looks of things, the truck had t-boned the sedan, rolling it up onto the hill. The truck was upside down nearby, the roof was collapsed into the driver's compartment.

"Help me, somebody ..." came a voice from the driver's seat.

Wallace checked quickly, yup, no one else in the car, no one lying nearby.

"Hey buddy, can you hear me? I'm Trooper Wallace with the Maryland State Police, there's an ambulance on the way."

Wallace could see the head wound, he also noticed that the side of the car was pushed enough into the driver's compartment that he was probably pinned inside. He ran back to his car, grabbed his first aid kit then scrambled back to the wreck.

He cut the airbag away, then applied a compress to the man's head. "You'll be all right, pal, head wounds always bleed like crazy. Can you feel your feet?"

Johansen thought that was an odd question, then he tried to wiggle his toes, he could feel his feet. That had to be a good thing, right?

"Yeah, yeah, I can feel them, but I can't move my left arm, my hip hurts like hell and it feels like my left foot is pinned somehow."

He heard the voice again, "Yeah, the side of your car is crushed, probably pinning your foot. Are you okay? I've gotta check on the other vehicle."

"Yeah, yeah, I think I'll live." And in truth, he thought he would.

Wallace got to the body on the road, at first he thought maybe the truck had hit a deer, the front end of the big Dodge was stoved in, Wallace noticed that there was a big gouge in the hillside, dirt knocked away from a sizeable boulder buried in the ground. Wallace figured that's what crushed the truck's front end, that little sedan wouldn't have done that.

Shining his flashlight over the body, he gulped, it was a human. A very dead human. He worked his way around to see the face, the head was twisted at an unnatural angle.

"Damn. Guess you've had your last drink, Gil. Stupid bastard."

"Dispatch, this is Wallace, one survivor, one DOA. Ah, I see the ambulance. Coming up from Cumberland."

"Copy that, Wallace."

Secretary of State Jedidiah Proctor looked around his office, he had expected to hear from Johansen by now. Well, the man was headed out to the boondocks, maybe cell reception was bad.

Things looked a little shaky at the moment. He'd heard that something, no one was sure what, was going on over at 8th and I. Vice Admiral Washington wasn't answering his phone, and the Secretary of the Interior, the guy he personally was the most worried about, was somewhere out of town. No one seemed to know where.

He looked at the phone on his desk. He was at home, his security team had convinced him that they could protect him better there than at the office. He was tempted to make a phone call, but who would he call? Then it struck him.

He dialed his office and got the duty officer.

"Chang here."

"Chang, this is Secretary Proctor, patch me through to the Speaker of the House. You can do that, right?"

"Absolutely, Sir. Hang on for just a second."

Proctor heard a number of electronic sounds, then a beep. "Sir, you're patched through."

"Thank you, Chang."

He heard the line ringing, then he heard, "Speaker Russell's office."

"Look at your caller ID, you know who this is, right?"

He sat there stunned as the phone disconnected. No harsh beeping indicating that the other end had disconnected, no dial tone, nothing, silence. "What the f ...?"

Proctor stood up and looked out the upstairs office window into the backyard. The lights had been on, now they were off. Something isn't right here, he thought.

"Sir. please get away from the window." It was the chief of his security detail, a guy named Holmes or Howard, he couldn't remember.

"What the hell is going on?" he hissed at the man in the hallway.

"Someone is out there, Sir. They cut the phone lines, my two guys down the street aren't answering their radio. We've got trouble."

"Who the hell are they?" Proctor snapped, just as he heard a downstairs window shatter.

Secretary Nakagawa stretched and looked at his watch, three in the morning. He was too keyed up to sleep. He looked over and saw Aspinall was wide awake. "Bill?"

"Just heard from my guys watching the Interstate exit, the guys watching the off-ramp all piled into their vehicles and headed out, at a high rate of speed I might add."

Nakagawa sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, "Heard anything else?"

"Yes Sir, the Marine Commandant and the rogue admiral are being held at 8th and I. Secretary Proctor should be dead or in custody within the hour."

"Anything from Capitol Hill?"

"Yeah, no one is answering their phone. Seems like everyone has decided to go to ground. In the morning they'll probably be holding press conferences decrying the unrest and demanding action."

Nakagawa stood up, "Yup, do something, anything, it's for the goddamned media anyway. I'm starting to regret coming to DC and taking this job. Any reason we need to stay out here any longer?"

"No Sir, I've got one team coming in, the other will continue to observe that off-ramp, just in case our militia pals come back. We can head out as soon as they're in."

"Okay good, I'm going to go take a piss, then we can start breaking camp."

"Leave the stuff, Sir, I'll have the other team do that at first light, provided everything stays quiet. Then we can head back to DC."

"Wonderful." Nakagawa groaned as he went through the tent flap.

From the tone of Aspinall's voice, and the use of 'Sir' once again. Secretary Nakagawa realized that his mini-vacation was over. Zipping himself back up, he muttered, "Guess it's time to save what's left of the Republic."

¹ Chase that source above and see for yourself.

² Oddly enough, Grabenstein is German for Gravestone.