Free The Nexus Colony by G.F. Schreader Page B

that led up to the governmental restricted area, in the distance he could see the unassuming guardhouse next to the stone pillars framing the driveway entry. The entrance looked like a stereo typical vacation home community, the kind where they posted a guard at a neat looking shack and they wouldn’t let anybody in except the residents and their guests, which is what the sign at the gate said. Abbott surmised theyhad constructed the facade that way so the facility blended right in with the neighborhood. The whole area in this part of the county was dotted with private vacation communities. Rest assured , he thought, if anybody tried to crash the gate, they’d more than likely get their asses blown away. This was a top secret government installation, and you wouldn’t get ten feet past the shack.
    Stopping, he showed his i.d. picture to the guard, and it was obvious to Abbott that the man was a military police officer even though he wasn’t in military garb. The guard stepped over to the guard shack window and swiped his card through the computer scan. A minute later he came back, handed the card back to Abbott, and gave directions on which road to follow up around the bend. Abbott thanked him and moved on. He thought it should have been a more secure entry, but then again, it all depended upon what was housed here. Obviously, not much.
    Driving along the wooded lane, Abbott was taken in by the subtle peacefulness of the Maryland woods. It had gotten too warm in the car, so he turned down the heater fan. The place reminded him of the neighborhood where Bill Korbett lived, only here there weren’t any ritzy homes visible like on Korbett’s street. Abbott had worked on several projects for Bill Korbett during the past several years. He admired the man who, since his retirement from active service, was now devoting his career in support of the most powerful human being on Earth—the President. A far cry from back in the days of Vietnam when Marshall Abbott had first met Bill Korbett.
    Korbett was a seasoned veteran then. A combat pilot who just made the rank of Major. He was a retired General now. But the man was always Bill Korbett whether he was the General living in the affluence of the Washington scene or the cocky new Major sucking down rot gut Thai beer in some hooch in Nakon Phenom. Abbott first got to know Korbett in Thailand. They had actually first met in the mountains of central Vietnam north of Da Nang near the DMZ. Korbett was an F4 fighter jock. The Air Force flew a lot of ground support missions along the demilitarized zone, and Korbett had been shot down right along the DMZ by one of those hand-held portable Russian missiles that the North Vietnamese Army was getting very cocky with.
    Abbott was Air Force Special Forces—a “Blue Beret” as they were called back then—and it had been Abbott’s team that was operating in the area trying to weed out the little bastards that were populating the hills carrying around the deadly back-pack missiles. Occasionally they’d get lucky and hit one of the American planes. The North Vietnamese Army—NVA troopers—were hard to eliminate because they immediately moved off every time they launched one. By the time the airborne reconnaissance platforms got a lock on their positions—which they got in less than a minute—and passed it off to 7th Air Force which in turn passed it off to teams like Abbott’s, the enemy was gone. Disappeared into the forests.
    That’s what Abbott was doing the day Korbett was shot down. They saw the two airmen punch out. Abbott just happened to be in the right place at the right time and saw the parachutes. Korbett was the lucky one. His navigator never made it because the gooks shot him while hanging in a tree. Abbott’s team found Korbett, then shot the North Vietnamese troopers. Korbett had sustained a sprained ankle and Abbott physically carried him back to the rendezvous point where they were picked up by chopper.
    It was back