“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Robert offered.
“If someone had gotten to him immediately a tourniquet may have saved him,” Arthur said. “In all the chaos, no one pursued that. He crawled off into the weeds and died. Never made an attempt to staunch the bleeding or apply a tourniquet on himself.”
Sonyea sighed, processing that. “He was crushed when he got back and his dad was gone. He didn’t expect that.”
“We didn’t expect that either,” Kevin said. “Them leaving took us all by surprise.”
Kevin and Arthur knew the basics of what had taken place. Robert and Sonyea, despite their injuries, had explained bits and pieces as they transported to the infirmary. Robert had discreetly informed Arthur that he suspected Carlos was a spy only to find that he was correct and that Carlos was now dead.
“So where did they go?” Robert asked. “You think he has a list of survival retreats operated by preppers and he’s going to work his way down that list until he finds one he can take over?”
Kevin and Arthur exchanged a glance.
“No,” Arthur said, looking Robert in the eye. “We think he put all his eggs in this basket. We have reason to believe that he pulled out only when he learned of a softer target.”
“Any idea who the target is? We should probably warn them if we can,” Sonyea said.
Arthur and Kevin exchanged another uncomfortable look.
“What is it?” Robert asked. “You’re making me nervous.”
“We think he’s headed to Damascus, Virginia,” Arthur finally said. “Carlos said he was asking lots of questions about you before they left.”
Robert sat bolt upright in the bed.
“Hey!” Doc protested. He’d been intently cleaning impacted dirt out of Robert’s infected bicep wound.
“I have to go,” Robert said.
“We know you do,” Kevin said. “You’ve got to let the doc finish his work first. You can’t travel or fight until you’re patched up.”
“You don’t understand,” Robert said, getting to his feet. “Every second I sit here, the congressman could be closing in on my family. My kids can shoot but they can’t turn back an army. They’ll be slaughtered.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Arthur said.
The doc put a hand on Robert, trying to steer him back onto the table, but Robert pulled loose.
“And just what are you going to do to prevent it?” Robert snarled. “How could you possibly stop it from down here? The only way it gets stopped is if I get on the road right now and try to take them down before they reach Damascus.”
“We don’t even know where they are,” Sonyea said. “They could be closing in right now.”
Robert’s mind raced at the possibility. Panic rose in his eyes.
Kevin stepped forward. “Sit down, Robert. Let the doc do his thing. We’re pulling in a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” Robert asked, distrustful of such things.
“Kevin’s pilot friend, Chuck,” Arthur said. “We’ve already been on the horn with him and he’s headed this way.”
“I thought he was working,” Sonyea said. “How’s he managing to get away with that chopper for a personal mission?”
Arthur reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of clear plastic discs. The warm yellow glow radiated from them even in the dim room.
Krugerrands.
“I can’t take that,” Robert said.
“Yes you can. It’s already done,” Kevin said. “It’s the necessary bribes for all parties involved—to get the chopper, the fuel, and for Chuck’s trouble.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Robert said, sitting back down on the exam table.
“He’ll be here in two hours,” Arthur said. “That gives you time to get patched up, clean up, pack your shit, and be waiting on him.”
“After the way I acted, I…” Robert trailed off, words failing him. “Thank you.”
“You risked your life to try to help us,” Arthur said. “You put yourself in danger. That’s all I remember.”
Sonyea moved forward and hugged Arthur, then Kevin. Robert started to rise and shake their hands but the doc tugged him back down.
“We’re going to need every second we have,” Doc warned. “Sit still and let me work.”
“I would hug you too,” Robert said. “I don’t have words.”
“You don’t need them,” Arthur said. “Friends do what they can. This is something we can do.”
42
In two hours, Robert and Sonyea were at the chopper pad with their gear.
“This is a hot landing,” Kevin said. “He’s not hanging around for lunch this time. When he lands, you guys will board and be off.”
Robert nodded. “Got it.”
When the chopper arrived, the folks on the ground covered their eyes while the rotor wash raised a dust cloud. Quickly, it set down and lowered the engine speed. Kevin opened the door and helped toss in their gear while Robert shook Arthur’s hand one more time. Sonyea had to get another hug.
Robert and Sonyea boarded and strapped in. They were ready to go but Kevin still hadn’t closed the door. Robert tried to yell at him, to get his attention, but no one could hear over the noise. Robert caught his eye and shrugged as if to ask what the hold up was. Kevin held up a finger, indicating that he should wait just one more moment. Robert struggled to be patient. It was not a skill he’d mastered.
Two more men arrived at the door. One tossed in a green duffel bag, the other slid in two padded green rifle cases. When they moved aside, Brandon stepped up and boarded the chopper. Robert caught Kevin’s eye again and got a thumbs up gesture. Yet again, he was overwhelmed by the generosity of his friends, their willingness to help him.
Brandon settled into a seat, strapped in, and put on a headset. Robert and Sonyea slid theirs on as well.
“Brandon, this is unexpected,” Robert said. “Are you sure?”
“I volunteered for this mission. I’m there to help, Mr. Hardwick, for as long as you need me. When this mess is done, I’ll ruck back here to the compound.”
Robert patted the younger man on the back. “Damn glad to have you, Brandon. Damn glad.”
“Everyone ready?” Chuck asked.
When there were no dissenting voices, he lifted off and set a course for Damascus, Virginia. It was only then Robert began to think again about what lay ahead of them. There were a lot of things he was uncertain about and he tried to push them to the side. The important thing was that he would be seeing his family soon and there was nothing more important than that.
Bonus Content
Please enjoy this sample chapter from The Mad Mick, the first book in The Mad Mick Series
Meet The Mad Mick
Conor Maguire felt the approach of colder weather in the morning air. He wore short sleeves but caught a slight chill on his front porch until the sunlight hit him and warmed his skin. He sipped coffee from a large mug, his favorite, embossed with Coffee Makes Me Poop. It had been a Father’s Day present from his daughter Barb, who really knew how to pick a gift.
There had been no frost yet, but that would come soon. The previous night had probably gone as low as the upper forties, but if the recent weather pattern held they should see upper sixties to lower seventies by the end of the day. It kind of sucked to not have a goofy weatherman updating them each evening on what to expect. It sucked not having an app on his phone that would allow him to see a current weather radar. All that technology had disappeared with the nationwide collapse.
Goats and hair sheep wandered the fenced compound nibbling at clusters of grass poking through crumbling fissures in the asphalt, dry leaves crackling beneath their hooves. Chickens trailed the goats, searching for bugs, worms, or anything unfamiliar to eat. Crows cawed in the distance, making their plans for the day. Conor dreaded the winter. He dreaded the cold and the inevitable discomfort winter brought. He dreaded the misery and suffering. Not so much for himself, as he was well-p
rovisioned and had wood heat, but studies both public and private had shown that the first winter with no power would result in a massive loss of life.
As a statistic, those lives meant little to him. He was a solitary person. But when you zoomed in on them, those lives were neighbors, they were kids he saw playing in the yards of homes he used to drive by; and elderly folks who waved to him from the porches of humble houses with white aluminum siding and cast iron eagles over the garage door. When spring came, when the crocuses pushed through the cool, damp earth, the world would be a changed place. Conor could not help but be very concerned about what stood between the world he looked at now and that future world he could not even imagine. Between those two bookends lay volumes of death, sickness, suffering, and unthinkable pain.
Conor's friends called him “the Mad Mick,” and if you knew him long enough you would understand why. He walked to the beat of his own deranged and drunken drummer. He had his own code of morality with zero fucks given as to what others thought of it. He lived with his daughter Barb in what he referred to as a homey cottage on top of a mountain in Jewell Ridge, Virginia. His cottage had once been the headquarters of a now-defunct coal company. It was a massive, sprawling facility where there had once been both underground and longwall mines. Numerous buildings scattered around the property held repair shops and offices.
When Conor first looked at the property he thought it was absolutely ridiculous that a man might be so fortunate as to live there. It reminded him of the lair of some evil genius in an old James Bond movie. It was surrounded by an eight-foot high chain-link fence and topped with barbed wire. There was a helipad and more space than he could ever use. There was even an elevator that would take him to an underground shop the coal company had used to repair their mining equipment.
The ridiculous part was that the facility, which had cost the coal company millions of dollars to build out, was selling for just a fraction of that because it was in such a remote location no one wanted it. In the end Conor came to own the facility and it did not even cost him a penny. His grateful employer had purchased the property for him. It was not an entirely charitable gesture, though. Conor was a very specialized type of contractor and his employer would do nearly anything to keep him at their beck and call.
In an effort to make the place more like a home, Conor had taken one of the steel-skinned office buildings and built a long wooden porch on it, then added a wooden screen door in front of the heavy steel door. Going in and out now produced a satisfying thwack as the wooden door smacked shut.
Conor placed his coffee cup on a table made from an old cable spool and sat in a creaking wicker chair. Barb backed out the door with two plates.
“I hope you’ve been to the fecking Bojangles,” Conor said. “I could use a biscuit and a big honking cup of sweet tea.”
Barb frowned at him. “You’re an Irishman, born in the old country no less, and you call that syrupy crap tea?”
“Bo knows biscuits. Bo knows sweet tea.”
“Bo is why you had to take to wearing sweatpants all the time too,” Barb said. “You couldn’t squeeze that big old biscuit of yours into a pair of jeans anymore.” She handed her dad a plate of onions and canned ham scrambled into a couple of fresh eggs.
Conor frowned at the insinuation but the frown turned to a smile as his eyes took in the sprinkling of goat cheese that topped off the breakfast. “Damn, that smells delicious.”
“Barb knows eggs,” his daughter quipped.
“Barb does know eggs,” Conor agreed, shoveling a forkful into his mouth.
Conor was born in Ireland and came to the U.S. with his mom as a young man. Back in Ireland, the family business was bomb-making and the family business led to a lot of family enemies, especially among the police and the military. After his father and grandfather were arrested in the troubles, Conor’s mom decided that changing countries might be the only way to keep what was left of her family alive. She didn’t realize Conor had already learned the rudiments of the trade while watching the men of his family build bombs. Assuming Conor would one day be engaged to carry on the fight, the men of the family maintained a running narrative, explaining each detail of what they were doing. Conor learned later, in a dramatic and deadly fashion, that he was able to retain a surprising amount of those early childhood lessons.
He and his mother settled first in Boston, then in North Carolina where Conor attended school. In high school, Conor chose vocational school and went on to a technical school after graduation. He loved working with his hands to create precise mechanisms from raw materials, which led him to becoming a skilled machinist and fabricator.
Conor was well-behaved for most of his life, flying under the radar and avoiding any legal entanglements. Then he was married, and the highest and lowest points of his life quickly showed up at his doorstep. He and his wife had a baby girl. A year later a drunk driver killed his wife and nearly killed Barb too. Something snapped in Conor and the affable Irishman became weaponized. He combined his childhood bomb-making lessons with the machinist skills he’d obtained in technical school and sought vengeance.
How could he not? Justice had not been served. There was also something deep within Conor that told him you didn’t just accept such things. You continued the fight. There was the law of books and there was the law of man. The law of man required Conor seek true justice for his dead wife.
When the drunk driver was released from jail in what the Mad Mick felt was a laughably short amount of time, the reformed drunk was given special court permission to drive to work. Conor took matters into his own hands. He obtained a duplicate of the headrest in the man’s truck from a junkyard and built a bomb inside it. While the man was at his job, Conor switched out the headrest. A proximity switch in the bomb was triggered by a transmitter hidden along his route home. One moment he was singing along to Journey on the radio and enjoying his new freedom. The next, his head was vaporized to an aerosol mist by the exploding headrest.
No one was able to pin the death on Conor despite a lack of other suspects. He had a rock-solid alibi. The proximity trigger detonated the bomb because the man drove within its range. No manual detonation was required on Conor’s part at all. After putting everything in place, Conor took his young daughter to the mall to get a few items. Dozens of security cameras picked up the widower and his daughter.
Oddly enough, his handiwork resulted in a job offer from an alphabet agency within the United States government. A team of men who made their living doing such things were impressed with Conor’s technique. They recognized him as one of their own and wanted to give him a position among their very unique department. He would work as a contractor, he would be well paid, and he would be provided with a shop in which do to his work. There were no papers to sign but it was made quite clear that any discussion of his work with civilians would result in his death.
Conor knew a good opportunity when he saw it. He accepted the offer and, as he proved his worth, his employer decided it was worthwhile to set Conor up in his deep-cover facility in Jewell Ridge, Virginia. On the surface, Conor presented himself to the local community as a semi-retired machinist who’d moved to the mountains to get away from the city. Mostly as a hobby and to help establish his cover, he took in some machining and fabrication work from the local coal and natural gas industry. Behind that façade, Conor was the guy that certain agencies and contractors came to for explosives and unique custom weapons for specialized operations.
Over his career, Conor created pool cue rifles that were accurate to 250 yards with a 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge. A rifle scope was integrated into a second pool cue and the matched set was used for a wet work operation in Houston that never made any newspapers. He once made a music stand for a clarinetist turned assassin that transformed into a combat tomahawk. It was used for an especially brutal assassination in Eastern Europe.
He turned automotive airbags into shrapnel-filled claymore mines that replaced standard air bags in most vehicles
and could be triggered remotely or by a blow to the front bumper. For another job, he’d created a pickup truck that appeared to have standard dual exhausts from the rear. In reality, one exhaust pipe was normal while the other was a rear-facing 40mm grenade launcher.
He routinely created untraceable firearms, suppressors, and unique explosive devices. His explosives contained components sourced from around the world which made it difficult to ascertain the bomber’s country of origin. It gave his employer plausible deniability. He had resources in every shadowy crevice of the world and they were always good to send Conor the odd bit of wire, circuitry, and foreign fasteners to include in his handiwork.
Like many bomb makers, Conor was fastidious in his level of organization and preparation. That carried over to his home life. His compound on the mountain had backup solar, available spring water, and food enough to last him for years. Even with those food stores, he maintained a little livestock just to freshen up the stew pot.
"What's on the agenda today, Barb?” he asked. “What do you have planned for yourself?"
"There's a girl at the bottom of the mountain, JoAnn, who I've become halfway acquainted with. It’s just her and her dad. Kind of like us. I ran into her yesterday and she said she was going to be doing some late-season canning so I offered to help. She’s canning things I’ve never done before, like French fries.”
“Canned French fries. That sounds bloody magical,” Conor said. “Plus I’m sure it would be nice to get some girl time, huh?”
Barb smiled back at her dad, a wee drop of mischievous venom in the expression, and yet another demonstration she’d been aptly named. "Actually, it would just be nice to be around somebody who’s not telling the same old tired jokes and boring stories all day long. Somebody who doesn't think they're God's gift to humor and storytelling."
Conor faked offense. "I always thought you liked my stories. I thought they were part of our familial bonding. Those stories are your heritage."
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