by Ted Bernard
Scanning the drill site, the size of three football fields, we could only vaguely discern what looked like a vast cleared parking lot harboring countless dark forms — structures, construction equipment, vehicles. Using his night vision binoculars, as if jotting items on a grocery list, Boss rapturously described what he was seeing.
“Whole damn thing is a sacrilege,” he cursed. “Wish't I’d the nerve for explosives … Well, shit! Look at that. Right near the gate, a modular building, got to be the office. Wonder what’s inside? Right near, yep. There’s the control van with the satellite dish. Be fun to put that sucker to sleep. Hey, look at all them well-casings laid out round the perimeter! Drill a bunch o' holes in them babies. Yeah! And there, them're the portable lighting towers and the portable potties. Portable this, portable that: bust 'em up quicker'n you can say ‘power to the women’. Yowser! Three bulldozers! Cut wires, slash hoses, put 'em to rest. And hmm, six flatbed tractor trailers loaded with drilling equipment. Too big to deal with. Tower'll soon rise 100 feet above the site. A fuckin' sacrilege!” he repeated.
The more Boss became animated by the possibilities, the more we became dubious about the wisdom of this mission. Melissa muttered, “What were we thinking?” Abby, at her side, replied, “Take courage, mum.”
“Let’s see,” Boss rolled on. “Holy moly: another gob of flatbeds with big plastic tanks. Don’t puncture those bad boys. Fracking fluid. Touch that stuff, yer a dead duck. Oh yeah, now! Lookee there: lined up outside the gate, at least ten sand tankers and a shitload of other targets. Hey girls, we are gonna make history! I’ll tell you this, we’re also damned lucky. This site’s jus' ripe for a little mayhem. Any later, it’d be life-threatening to mess with.”
He ordered each of us to look through the night vision binoculars. We passed them around. Then he asked, “Who could not make hide nor hair of what you saw?” Of the six of us, four raised hands.
“Okay, good,” he replied. “That leaves Abby and Hannah. For you two the scene popped clearly into place, right?”
We agreed. “Okay, we’ll set you up near the bottom of this here cliff. There’s a rocky ledge with good sightlines within earshot of the drill pad. I’ll explain your job when we get there.”
Boss rose and signaled us to retreat away from the cliff. My jitters were palpable. He found a well-worn path that switched back and forth along the cliff’s steep eastern flanks. We proceeded downward to the ledge where he would leave Abby and me. Directing his attention to us, he handed us each the night vision binoculars. “Now listen. Your work’s gonna be key tonight. You won’t be directly involved in the beautification of this industrial tract. But the safety of the rest of us and the success of this mission will depend on your sharp eyes and communication.”
We stood stone still. Some pair. Our blackened faces were frozen in death stares — what our contemporaries in those days might have labeled “RBFs,” meaning “Resting Bitch Faces”, our mouths curled downward, brows furrowed, lips tense and tight. But nobody was in an ironic mood that night. We hadn’t just put on those faces. We were terrified.
“Set yerselves up right here, comfortable as can be,” Boss reassured us like a fondly grand-dad. “Constantly scan the site, one of you the left half, the other the right. Pay attention to the periphery where there may be off-site watchers. Don’t for a minute stop your surveillance. Hannah, you are responsible for communicating what you both see, or don’t see, to the rest of us. That’s what this owl caller is for.” He handed me a beautifully carved and burnished flute-like instrument.
He handed the caller to me. I turned it over and over, relishing the balance and feel of it. “Did you make this?”
“Shore did,” he replied with obvious pride. He gently took the caller back. “Here, lemme show you how to use it.” After a deep in-breath, with his fingers at the openings, as if performing on a piccolo, he pursed his lips, delicately releasing his breath into the caller in three short spurts. Out the other end came the haunting, resonant call of the Barred Owl, referred to as the Hoot Owl in these parts: The familiar Who-who … Who, who, who-whoooo. In the darkness, I could detect a smile escaping the corners of his mustachioed mouth. The call sent shivers down my spine.
“You try,” he said.
My first attempts were risible, nothing like an owl. “Purse your mouth more tightly,” Boss instructed. “Middle finger covers the small hole for the first two hoots; index finger over the big hole for the second set.”
On the seventh try, I began to sound like a tentative owl. On the tenth, Boss clasped my shoulder and whispered, “Okay, you got it. Best Hoot Owl Gilligan ever produced.” The others gesticulated silently, thumbs up around. I took in Abby’s broad indigenous smile gleaming through her smudged face, easing the tension of the moment, my woodsy audition.
“Now pay attention. This is important,” Boss commanded. “Here are the signals: One full”, cupping his hands, he called: “Who-who … Who, who, who-whoooo. One full call like that means the coast is clear. Two full calls, quickly rendered, then repeated once, means danger, take cover.” He demonstrated again. “One full call from you back at us means all clear, resume your work. Three calls from you, again in rapid succession, is a crisis: it’s a distress signal, meaning you need help. Whatever your signal, each time you call, I will respond with a fox call indicating that your message has been received. If we hear nothing from you, it just means that you see nothing to report. In other words, all quiet means no problem at the moment.”
Boss cupped his hands again and sort of screeched through them. To us, the sound was high-pitched, like a child in distress. He repeated it for emphasis, saying simply, “Fox call: received your message.”
Finally, he said, “When we have completed our work, I will signal with four separate fox calls. You acknowledge with the all-clear call, which is?”
“One full call”, replied Abby. I nodded.
At Boss’ request, I hooted through the signals again, one by one, and Boss quizzed each of the others on their meaning. After several repetitions, when the countryside had been flush with owl sounds, Boss took the caller and made one last set of calls, aiming his hoots northward. Somewhere in the far distance, away on the darkest night of October, at the very edge of Blackwood Forest, we heard a reply. Boss called again. The owl responded again. And again and again. We froze in reverence: this dialogue across the countryside, across species. All went still, Boss moving not a muscle. We sensed the faintest waft of feathers on a wingspan of thirty-five inches. The owl descended. She perched stealthily on a branch above us, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, scrutinizing us, saucer eyes judging our mettle. In time, she expanded her chest and across the landscape she hooted the all clear signal. Her call hung there in the stillness of the night.
Then, she swooped back away toward the fated forest.
Boss whispered a prayer of supplication. “Sister owl, ohhh sistah owl! We implore thee: Bring us great good fortune. Bring us humble accomplishment. And guide us safely home.”
Into the sacred space he had created, he solemnly rose, his head bowed. We followed suit. Before departing the ledge, the others lined up to hug Abby and me. Impatient with this sisterly waste of time, Boss reminded us to never — ever — remove our gloves, nor to spit or exhale on any surface, nor scratch our skin, and finally to keep our berets firmly over our hair. With that, they departed. The last bit of the trail required a backside-slide down a steep section of loose rock and sand. They dusted-off and marched toward the gate.
12
When the insurgents approached the gate, Boss shined his light on a series of warning signs. He read them out loud with commentary.
Live Wellsite. STOP. High Pressure Gas. “Gas my ass.”
Poison Gas Present. “No shit, Captain Obvious.”
Personal Protection Equipment Required in this Location.
“Fuckers.”
Notice: Authorized Personnel Only. “We ARE authorized,
d
ickheads.”
Danger: No Smoking. “No problem. We’re all pure and innocent.”
Caution: Do Not Drink Water. “No chance in hell.”
“See what we’re dealing with here?”
“Crap. Should we even be crossing into this place?” Melissa whispered.
“It’ll be fine. Site’s not live yet.” Boss flicked off his light. “Squat in that there ditch,” he commanded, pointing toward the edge of the gravel driveway leading up to the gate. “Reconnaissance time. I’ll scope the perimeter, check for surveillance systems, find the best way through the chain-link. Keep your ears and eyes alert.” With his surveillance sensing device in hand, he advanced in a crouch, ghosting toward the gate.
Back on our ledge, Abby, fixed her glasses on the perimeter fence. Seeing nothing but Boss creeping around it, she whispered, “Think we should issue an all-clear?”
“No. Remember no signal means no worries.” I scanned the interior, saw no movement.
Abby saw Boss abruptly drop to the ground.
“He’s heard something!”
Scoping the road, both of us saw a blurry figure at the dark edge of a pasture where the driveway met the road. It was too dark and distant to discern.
“Danger!” Abby stuttered. I sent two quick calls across the night.
Boss called his response and scrambled under a brushy clump. Twenty yards back, the women hunkered low.
Abby focused her glasses on the verge between the road and the pasture. The form emerged from a patch of dried goldenrod. It crossed the road. “Deer,” she whispered.
I sent out an all-clear. A fox call replied. The other women rose to their haunches. Boss ghosted his way further along the fence. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. “So far as I can tell,” he told them, “site has no remote surveillance and no motion activated lights. Decided not to take out lights at the gate. Could get us into trouble if somebody drives up. Found a weak patch about halfway around the west side of the fence; some brush there to cover the cut. That’ll give us a place to crawl in. Now foller me.”
Astrid, Samantha, Em, and Melissa dropped into single file behind Boss. Within minutes, he had cut a gap in the fence and they were on site. From our perch, Abby and I watched Boss animatedly directing the women. He split them into two groups. Boss, with Melissa and Em, headed straight for the office structure, Astrid and Samantha toward the flatbeds. We continued nervously scanning the perimeter.
“Let’s see if we can get inside this place,” Boss said as the three approached the office. He checked for wires, found none, and out of his pocket pulled his locksmith tools. In a jiffy, the door swung open. “Way too easy,” he said. “Ah, no wonder. Nothin' in here yet, nothin' of importance anyway.” His headlamp illuminated a desk and office chair, a filing cabinet, wastebasket, and coffee maker. Checking drawers and wall shelves and the adjacent bathroom, he said, “Not a freaking thing here, not even toilet paper.”
“Okay, you guys, pick up that desk and chair and carry 'em out the door.” When they had done so, he said, “Now, let’s have some fun.” From his pack, he chose two short-handled sledge hammers and two pairs of safety glasses, handing them to Melissa and Em. “Put on those glasses now and see if you can bust these things to pieces.”
In short order, Em and Melissa had rendered the furniture into a pile of scrap. “That was satisfying,” Melissa concluded. “Big waste,” Em retorted with disgust. “When I see all the waste in this country, I compare to Senegal. People there would make use of meubles, like these, eh? Les Americains sont vraiment déraisonables!”
“We’re one hell of a long way from Senegal,” Melissa responded without asking for a translation.
“C’est vrai, that is so”, Em admitted, a profound sadness in her whisper.
They joined Boss in the van. He had broken the drivers-side window, gained access. Like a berserk electrician, he yanked and snipped wiring beneath and alongside a control panel that might have launched a missile but instead was meant to set off explosives and control drilling. “Sledge anything you like,” he invited the others. He exited the van and climbed onto its roof. With a small crowbar, he yanked the satellite dish free of its moorings, cut wires, and slung it to the ground.
They moved to the bulldozers. With tools meant for this work, Boss demonstrated. He cut wires, sawed through a fuel line, hacked open hydraulic hoses, hammered at levers on the control panel. Handing over his tools, he told them to disable the other dozers. “Have a ball. You pro'lly ain’t never gonna have a chance to do this again.”
Astrid and Samantha meanwhile worked their way across the flatbeds, spray-painting each of the frack-fluid tanks with messages such as:
NO CIVILIZATION WORTH ITS SALT
WOULD INJECT POISON INTO ITS VEINS.
WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS IN HERE? TELL US, YOU BASTARDS.
ANCESTORS OF THE DELAWARE ARE PLANNING REVENGE.
H2O PLUS THIS STUFF = DEATH (with a skull and crossbones)
FRACKERS ARE CRIMINALS.
And many others, Astrid’s fertile mind churning out copy faster than either of them could paint.
Boss, Melissa, and Em came across to the flatbeds to help with messaging. After the tanks had been labeled, Boss gathered the four women for a lesson. “Now we want to mess with each of these here trucks. Watch what I do.” He proceeded to the front of the big rigs attached to the flatbeds. He climbed on the running board, smashed the driver’s side window, climbed aboard to release the mammoth hood covering the engine. He found and pulled the dipstick from the engine and from his pack removed a funnel and poured a cup or so of the finely powdered aluminum oxide down into the crankcase. “Alright!” he happily exclaimed. “This’ll cause this engine to seize up before they can git to New Barnstable. But just in case, we’ll also dump a liter of corn syrup to mix with the diesel.” He hopped down and walked around to the back of the cab, snapped the lock on the fuel tank with a hammer and plumber’s wrench, and poured a half-container of syrup into the tank. He repeated the process on the other side into a second tank. Fully satisfied, he explained, “Carbon from the sugars in this stuff will build up on the engine’s cylinder walls and rings and will also cause these babies to belch and run poorly or seize like Grandpa’s wicked constipation back in fifty-four, the sacred year of my birth.”
1954? Astrid computed. Holy shit, this guy’s almost sixty.
“Okay team, get to work on the rest of these rigs!” When the work had been completed, the four found boss at the casings making holes with his portable high-speed industrial drill. He stopped and told them, “We ain’t got time to do them all. This is just to let them know we have more imagination than they can imagine. Now go ahead and spray some of that fluorescent orange around these holes. Maybe make an arrow so's they don’t overlook our skill and craftsmanship.” He then randomly drilled another few dozen lengths of pipe, telling them, “These here holes are for them to discover. Means they have to inspect every pipe, more or less. Diabolical bastard, I am. We don’t want 'em driving any of these into the ground any time soon.”
At that moment, Em, who had been posted at the gate to listen, saw headlights in the distance just as she heard two quickly repeated calls from the ledge. She ran to Boss.
“Hannah hoots!” she exclaimed. “Danger, danger! Un véhicule s’approche de la porte.”
Boss, dredging up an apposite response from his rusty Vietnamese French, replied in a civilized voice nobody had ever heard, “Merci, madamoiselle! and called sharply toward us.
Unwittingly, the insurgents then made two mistakes.
Boss knew that they had only a minute or two to get out of sight. He signaled the women to duck walk to the fence. On their knees, they scrambled along the fence to the opening and, one-by-one, crouch-ran across a mowed patch to a brushy fence line. If they could get to the other side, there would be cover. Under pressure, he instructed them to vault over and through barbed wire, lie flat in the underbrush on the other side. They obeyed his com
mand. He heard a faint, “Ouch!”
Shit, one of these women’s been scratched by rusty barbed wire. Just as the thought crossed Boss’ brain, he realized his first mistake — that not ten feet to his left was a collapsed gate through which everyone could have passed unscathed. No time for a do-over. He scurried through the opening, dropped to his belly, and pulled out his binoculars. Looking back to the main gate, he saw a black and yellow Dodge Charger pull up. It made a wide circle and faced outward. Two deputies emerged. Each lit up a cigarette. “No smoking, you fuckers,” Boss whispered to himself. One officer casually inspected the lock on the gate, the other flicked on an LED flashlight and swept the beam around the fencing.
Boss whispered to Em, “We’re sunk if they see the pile of office stuff or read the messages on those tanks.”
“Merde!”
“Oui, merde.”
The beam made casual passes around the perimeter of the site, the officer looking for intruders, unusual movement. The cruiser radio blasted a scratchy message. “Fifty-eight. Fifty-eight: Pickup truck off road on seven-four-three. Ten miles west of drill pad. Medivac on the way.” The officer flicked off his flashlight and hurried after his fellow deputy to the cruiser. They squelched their cigarettes, jumped in, activated the strobe lights, and screeched down the driveway.
“Dodged a bullet,” Boss said to the others as I issued the all-clear. “Who got scratched?”
“It was me,” Samantha said. “It’s really nothing; ripped this arm of my t-shirt — a small scratch,” she said pointing to her elbow.”
“Is it bleeding?”
“Not now.”
“Okay, don’t touch the wound and don’t remove your gloves. Go get a tetanus booster tomorrow.”
This is when Boss made his second mistake. Had he been thinking clearly, he would have hauled out immediately, satisfied with the night’s accomplishments and aware that they had been fortunate to escape notice. But Boss being Boss could not resist the pictures in his head of toppled portalets, busted light towers, and flat tires across the site.