GOVERNOR TAD PARKER FELT THE TREMOR.
His command post was in southern Kentucky twenty miles north of the Tennessee border. It was one of the sharpest tremors he’d experienced since the big earthquake.
They’d taken shelter in a remote, backwoods valley near Mammoth Cave, about twenty-five miles northeast of Bowling Green. For the last few days they’d let the hills screen them as much as possible, moving mainly by jeep and all-terrain vehicles. They’d changed position repeatedly, trying to avoid a confrontation with Army troops.
The governor was with a squad of the Kentucky National Guard. Fifty men. Most of the guard units in the state had ignored his call. Only five had turned out, and he’d had no complaints about their performance. About thirty men had taken positions in the hills around the mine. They could be overrun, but it wasn’t going to be easy. It was rugged country with a lot of good defensive positions. With any luck, they could delay the movement of the bomb for a long time.
And that was the best Parker could hope for. Delay.
He was under no illusions. There was little he could do to stop them.
When the latest tremor struck, Parker still hadn’t fallen asleep in his tent. He hadn’t been able to sleep more than a few hours in days. Getting out of his cot, he was unable to tie his boots. His hands fumbled with the knots.
Parker stepped outside his tent and saw the strange lights blazing in the sky. He stared at them for a long time. He’d heard about the eerie phenomenon. But this was the first time he’d actually seen it. He stood there, watching the bands of light swirling across the horizon. The spectacle fascinated him.
Once the ground started moving, the only thing that mattered was how long it would last. There’d been a few times during some of the earlier aftershocks when he’d almost screamed, thinking the shaking would never stop, that the earth would just go on heaving until everything on it—every building, church, home, and school was pulverized.