Carlie Simmons (Book 3): The Way Back by JT Sawyer

possible?”
    “We’ve been away a long time,” said
Carlie. “They must have gotten overrun by creatures in the region or had
someone inside get infected and spread the virus.
    “I wonder if Eliza and the president made
it out, or General Adams?” whispered Carlie, interlacing her fingers and trying
to ignore her sweaty palms.
    “Now what?” said Pavel. “What were your
emergency protocols in the event your facility at White Sands was compromised?”
    Everyone shot grave looks at each other as
the room grew heavy with silence. “I figured that no one came looking for us
after the destroyer went down because they were stretched thin on resources but
now,” she said, rubbing her chin, “now, it seems like they may have all
perished, and no one else knew about our mission and location.”
    “But your protocols…” Pavel said again.
“Surely there must be other bases that would be operational and would take up
the helm of command.”
    Shane put his glass down on the floor
beside his chair. “The only place I recall hearing about that was still
functional was Fort Lewis in Washington. That would become the new central
command in the western U.S. if White Sands fell.”
    Matias grabbed the large wall map they had
looked at earlier and unrolled it on the floor in the middle of the group. “We
are here,” he said, pointing at a tiny dot of land in the ocean east of Cancun,
Mexico. Then he slid his finger along the map past Mexico City, San Diego, San
Francisco, Portland, and stopped just south of Seattle. “And this is Fort
Lewis.”
    Jared was scratching the scruff on his
left cheek. “Damn, that’s a helluva stretch.”
    “I’d say over two thousand miles at
least,” said Matias.
    “How are we going to get there from here?”
said Amy.
    “We could mountain bike,” said Jared with
a smirk. “Or use a hot-air balloon. Shit—this whole thing sucks.”
    Amy shoved him back in his chair. “Just
shut up, genius. My leg doesn’t hurt as much from all the painkillers but don’t
make me expend energy kicking you in the ass. Besides, I haven’t decided if I’m
even gonna travel with you again after this.”
    “What about sailing up the coast from here
to say, Galveston, Texas or Corpus Christi?” said Alejandro. “There’s no
shortage of sailboats near Cancun. The trade winds are good now and will be in
full swing until late winter.”
    “Except none of us are experienced
sailors. That sounds like it could just lead to a replay of being a castaway
again,” said Amy.
    “You mentioned a helicopter near the beach
in Cancun,” said Matias. “What can you tell me about it?”
    “It was used by maritime security and
mostly kept by the resorts for med-evacing drunken college kids who sustained
head injuries from diving off the hotel balconies into the swimming pools,”
said Alejandro, leaning back to his desk and pawing through a green bowl full
of keys. He fished out a large silver key with a white fingergrip and tossed it
to Matias. “I got those off the Maritime Security boat along with the weapons
in my possession—those belong to the helicopter according to the captain’s
logbook.”
    Matias rubbed the key between his fingers.
“Probably a twin-engine chopper similar to what our Coast Guard used,” said
Matias. “Those are pretty standard along the coast here in Mexico and Latin
America. If that’s the case then it will have a decent fuel capacity so we
would be able to make it as far as northern Mexico along the Arizona border
before we need to top off the tank. From there, it’d be a straight shot to San
Diego. Then we’d have to hit the outlying airports on our way up the coast
towards Washington. The rural airstrips are far more likely to have fuel left.”
    “There are those federale airstrips south
of the Arizona border that we used to use during joint-DEA ops,” said Shane. “Those
would be a good bet.”
    “Look, as much as I’d like to get back to
the States and see what’s