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needed to know. At their present speed, they would make it back to the rig lift in just over ten minutes.
    Ten minutes. It would be a fucking eternity, and Mulligan already felt his guts begin to tighten. Ten minutes to get back to Harmony. He could bail out of the rig at the elevator, and sprint to the parking lot where his truck was parked, over five hundred meters away. Though Mulligan was in great shape, he was no Olympic sprinter, so it would take at least two minutes to cover that distance. Then he would have to get out the base’s main gate; if it was still open, that was doable. If it had been closed in accordance with lockdown procedure, that made things quite difficult. It was much more than just a chain-link fence, it was a reinforced ingress point that had been designed to keep the goblins out if the balloon ever went up. That meant Mulligan would have to drive through the parking lot and across about two miles of open fields until he could get to a portion of the base where the perimeter fencing was in fact only a double barrier of chain link topped with concertina wire. He felt he could crash through it in his F-250, but he had no idea if the truck would be damaged in the attempt. If he blew a tire, that would definitely make a fucked-up situation considerably worse. And even though his truck was hardy with a four inch lift, a Rancho suspension, and thirty-six inch tires, driving two miles overland would be slow going, even in four wheel drive. He figured it would take him at least twenty minutes to get through the fence, then another five to get to the nearest road. And then, the house outside of Scott City was almost thirty minutes away.
    And by then, the first nuclear weapons would have found their targets. Mulligan had no idea which city or military installation was first on the list, but if they were anywhere within five hundred miles, then the electromagnetic pulse would likely turn his truck into an extremely expensive door stop.
    “Still trying,” Peter said. He had returned to the engineer’s station in the second compartment. “No luck so far…”
    “Please keep at it,” Mulligan said. He reached out suddenly and flipped a shielded switch on the center console. CJ noticed it, and she looked across the cockpit at him.
    “Why did you just switch off the transponder?” she asked.
    “It’s not the transponder I’m worried about,” Mulligan said.
    “The remote control link?”
    Mulligan nodded as he slowed the SCEV and brought it into a relatively tight left turn. “Exactly. Listen, I’m not going to the rig lift. I’ll drop you guys at Bravo Exit. You’ll be able to get into the base from there.”
    “What about you?”
    “One Truck and I are going out for a Sunday drive,” Mulligan said.
    “Sergeant Major, that’s totally against regulations,” CJ said.
    “My wife and kids have no idea what’s coming, CJ. There’s no one to help them. In the rig, I might be able to get to them in time.” Mulligan was aware of the peculiar pleading quality that had crept into his voice, and he despised himself for it. His heart was hammering, and his face tingled. He felt as if he couldn’t get enough air. He was a hair’s breadth away from panic, and the sensations did not suit him. He had faced substantial dangers in the past, and he’d never felt like he was about to unload a series of Hershey squirts into his underwear. But this time, it wasn’t necessarily his life that was on the line. It was his family’s.
    “So you’re just going to steal the rig?” Peter asked from the back.
    “I would consider it more of a non-collateral loan,” Mulligan said. “Don’t sweat it, guys. You’ll be able to access the base from Bravo. No one’s going to leave you outside, and we’ll be there in three minutes.”
    “But how will you get back in the base?” CJ asked. “Even if you do somehow manage to outrun nuclear missiles and get to them, how will you get back?”
    “I’m sure