It had been a peaceful day, almost allowing them to forget the state of the world and the tough times they'd gone through. The only sound was the rustling of stalks in the breeze and the snap as ears of corn were broken from those stalks. Conor straightened from his task, removed his cap, and used the tail of his shirt to mop at his forehead. He was pleased to see that he was on the last row he'd planned on picking that day. Then the satellite phone in Conor's pocket blared its trilling ring.
Conor's heart filled with dread. This was the ring Browning had warned him would come, but he'd nearly given up on ever hearing it. After all, it had been nearly six months since Browning had given him the phone. All that time, he'd kept the phone charged as instructed and carried it with him each day. Now the last thing he wanted was to answer it and hear that voice.
He groaned in defeat and fished the phone from a cargo pocket. He stared at the display for a moment before taking the call. "Conor Maguire."
"Glad you answered.” Browning's voice resonated in his ear. “My threats must have made an impression."
The voice and the words it spoke made Conor's hate for the man come to an immediate boil. He didn't take well to being threatened and he wasn't a man who typically allowed his enemies to enjoy a long, peaceful life. He preferred to personally usher them into the next world. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that.
"What do you want, Browning?"
"I warned you this call would come. It's time for your first assignment, Mad Mick. I'll be there tomorrow. Make sure you're home."
Browning hung up and Conor was left standing there in the high corn with the phone to his ear, his skin itching and sweat running down his back. He wanted to throw the phone with all his might but knew there would be consequences. He shoved it into his pocket and stomped out of the garden. He stood there fuming and heaving for a moment, rage surging inside him. He yanked his radio from his belt. "Barb, Shannon, and Ragus, meet me at the porch. We need to talk."
He shoved the radio into his pocket, took hold of the wheelbarrow handles, and headed for the house. With that call, Conor knew that life was once again about to change for them. As a man who enjoyed having an element of control over his life and his surroundings, this didn't set well with him.
Conor delivered the wheelbarrow to the porch. Shannon and Ragus were already there, a tub of corn shucks and silks at their feet. A plastic bucket held the cleaned ears that were waiting on Barb's blade.
Conor joined them on the porch, glad to be out of the hot sun for a moment. He sagged into a wooden chair and called for his daughter. "Barb Maguire!"
"I'm coming!" she called from the house. There was the sound of hurried footsteps, then she banged her way out the screen door. She stopped in her tracks, all eyes upon her. "What are you all bloody staring at?"
"You're wearing an apron, my daughter," Conor said with a grin. "Never thought I'd see the day."
Barb snatched it off her head and tossed it at Conor, embarrassed that she'd forgotten to remove it before coming out. "Who'd have thought slicing corn off the cob was such messy work? I'd just as soon butcher an animal."
"Wish I had a picture of that," Ragus teased. "Barb in an apron."
"Keep flapping those gums and I'll give you something to remember it by," Barb warned.
"Dammit!" Conor snapped. "Can you two put a cork in it for a fecking minute?"
All eyes swiveled to Conor, unused to such a display of frustration coming from him. Typically he enjoyed the way they ribbed each other. His was a houseful of people who jabbed at each other mercilessly.
"What's the matter, Dad? You feeling okay?"
Conor met his daughter's eye. "That bloody phone I've been carrying around since we got back from Israel just rang."
The magnitude of his words settled over everyone. They all knew what this meant.
"Browning?"
“Yep.”
"What did that bastard want?" Barb demanded, her lip curling in disgust. She'd experienced the man personally, sitting in the vehicle at Oceana Naval Air Station, listening while he explained the new lay of the land, while he bragged about Ricardo's death, and listening as he threatened to rain hell down on their compound if they didn't cooperate with him. She'd wanted to snap his neck.
Conor searched his shirt for a dry spot, then used it to wipe at his face. "He says he has work for me. He's showing up tomorrow."
Ragus’s eyes widened. "He's coming here?"
"Yes, and we need to go over a few things first. I'd like to get Wayne back here if we can. This calls for all hands on deck."
"You can usually reach Johnny's farm on the radio if you ride about a mile down the mountain," Barb suggested. "There's a sharp turn that looks down on the valley where he lives."
"Then get your gear and make it happen. Don't go into details on the radio. Tell him that everyone is safe but we need him here if he can pull it off."
"Got it." Barb hurried back into the house to get her gear. She was back in a second, swinging her chest rig over her head as she sprinted for the corral. In her camo shorts and gear, scrambling across the dusty enclosure, she looked like a soldier from the Vietnam War scrambling from his hooch to join a firefight.
"What about us?" Ragus asked. "Anything you need us to do?"
"Corn, me boy. Finish shucking so we can get some canning done today. I'll not let Browning's visit ruin all the work we've put into this garden."
Ragus sighed. "That's it? Canning?"
"We'll nail down everyone's roles once Wayne gets here. There's no point in digging into it now. Besides, don't be acting like you always get left out of the excitement. Do I have to remind you of what happened while I was gone last time?"
Ragus and Shannon exchanged a sheepish grin. Things had gotten pretty lively and they were lucky to be around to tell the story. They'd been taken prisoner, locked in a shed at Ragus's old house, and likely would have been killed if not for Wayne's intervention.
"Corn, Ragus," Shannon said, her voice taking on a robotic drone. "We shuck the corn."
16
Conor's Compound
Jewell Ridge, Virginia
It was early evening when Wayne arrived at the compound on horseback. Conor had traded with a neighbor for a home-cured ham and was grilling thick slices over wood coals. The grill was also scattered with new potatoes, peppers, onions, squash, and corn. Shannon had recently become interested in baking and had cooked several loaves of bread, which they planned on topping with homemade jelly Conor had picked up from another neighbor.
"My God, it smells amazing up here," Wayne said. He tied his horse off near a water trough made of an old truck tire. Since he had no idea what was going on or how long he might be staying, Wayne carried a pack with a couple of days’ worth of gear. He dumped the pack and his rifle on the porch.
Conor grinned through the grill smoke. "There's nothing like the aroma of charred pig meat, is there? It hits us at a primal level and we all turn into slobbering hounds."
Conor's dogs agreed, the two slobbering beasts sitting nearby and praying something might roll off the grill.
"Yeah, to hell with flowers.” Wayne grinned. “I'd rather sniff a slice of bacon any day. Now, what's so important that I had to haul my ass back up the mountain?"
"Is ham not a good enough excuse?"
Wayne shrugged. "Ham maybe, but bacon for certain."
"Sorry. No bacon unless I can learn to tease some out of a goat carcass."
Slouched in a nearby chair, Ragus slowly shook his head in disgust. "Is nothing sacred, Conor? You'd really try to make bacon out of a goat?"
"I might. What's wrong with it?"
"Some questions answer themselves," Shannon said.
Ragus nodded in agreement. "It's an abomination."
Conor waved them off. "Hanging out with Barb has poisoned your thinking about goats. They have bellies, same as a pig. If it's got a belly, it's got bacon." He turned back to Wayne. "That blasted phone I've been carrying around
since I got back from Israel finally rang today. That bastard Billy Browning is dropping in tomorrow with a new assignment."
Wayne looked up in surprise. "The man who replaced Ricardo?"
"He didn't replace Ricardo," Conor snarled, "he killed him. Browning may think he's running the show now but I'm not accepting this as a permanent arrangement."
"But you're not exactly in a position to refuse him, right?" Wayne pressed.
"Not yet. He claims he has targeting coordinates already locked in for this compound. He says if I refuse to cooperate, he'll flatten the top of this mountain with a missile strike. I have every reason to think he's capable of doing it."
"Which is why we worked our asses off since you came back," Wayne remarked.
Conor nodded. "Exactly, though I wish we'd been able to use the mine shafts beneath the compound. I've always imagined them as a fallback position. My own hillbilly missile silo."
Wayne overturned a plastic bucket and took a seat on it. He was close enough to continue the conversation, far enough to be clear of the grill smoke. "We looked at it, but I don't think you can get that basement level of yours operational without a constant source of electricity."
Part of the reason this property had appealed to Conor when he first saw it was the existence of underground infrastructure. There had been extensive mining beneath the site, some of it close to the surface, and the company had made a sizable investment over the years in the underground facilities. There was an underground shop and some underground offices. Portions of those underground facilities were finished out to a level that made them nearly indistinguishable from the buildings on the surface.
When they ceased mining operations on the property, the company concreted the lower penetrations into the mountain, sealing any exterior entrances and ventilation shafts. They cut the power to the underground facilities. Without running pumps, ground water rose in the mine shafts, though Conor was fairly certain it had not reached the finished levels. Without running fans, it was also likely that bad air had accumulated, creating potentially fatal conditions for anyone exploring the lower levels without the proper gear.
Conor had planned to demolish the plugged entrances, most likely with explosives since that was his happy place. He thought that might allow the water to drain out and improve conditions underground. When he'd returned from Israel, Conor made it clear he wanted to immediately start work on that project as an insurance policy against Billy Browning and the missile strike he threatened.
Conor and Wayne had spent days scouring over the old hand-drawn maps of the shafts and tunnels. In the end, Wayne had convinced Conor that the plan was not feasible. Without running pumps, they'd constantly be battling rising water. Ventilation would also be an issue. Even though Conor had a decent solar backup system, there was no way it would generate enough power to continually run the enormous fans required to keep the air breathable in the recesses of the mountain.
"You need another plan, my friend," Wayne had told him.
The news was a crushing blow to Conor. While he was a resourceful man and assumed he could find a way to make it happen, that wasn’t the case this time. Had he opened those levels years ago, he might have been able to put measures in place to keep them inhabitable without power, but it was too late now. Under current conditions, there was no way they could open up those levels and build the solar infrastructure required to keep them safe.
They'd had this conversation in Conor's living room. Conor and Wayne had the mining maps spread out around the floor. Barb was with Johnny's family at the time, and Ragus and Shannon sat nearby playing cards. The discussion hung like an oppressive cloud over the room, everyone demoralized that Conor's ace-in-the-hole had been snatched from him.
Ragus had never seen Conor looking so utterly broken. He appeared to not only be at a loss for answers but at a loss for even what questions to ask. In an attempt to help, Ragus asked one for him. "If this isn't possible, what else would work?"
When Conor didn't answer, Wayne said, "I guess the only comparable solution would be a cave or a mine that wasn't flooded."
"It would have to be close enough for us to move gear there, while still allowing us to keep an eye on this place," Conor added. "We've got running trucks and enough fuel for some short trips, but the roads aren't passable if you go too far down the mountain in either direction. Plus, if we move anything too far away, we can't keep an eye on it or get to it if we need it. I don't want us scattered out all over the place."
Ragus pondered this a moment before replying. "Would a dog-hole mine work?"
Every face in the room turned to him with confusion, but it was Conor who put those looks into words. "What the hell is a dog-hole mine, lad?"
"It's an old coal mine cut into the side of a mountain,” Ragus explained. “It's like somebody found an exposed seam and mined it back into the mountain as far as it went. They're old mines, not like the ones you see these days. They didn't use a lot of heavy equipment like the big mines did. Sometimes it was just families or neighbors working there."
"Do you know of such a place?" Conor asked.
"Yeah," Ragus said. "There's one in the woods behind my mom's place. She never would let me go in there, but supposedly the people she bought the place from used it as a barn. A neighbor told me they made liquor in there because it was the perfect place to hide a still."
"Why do they call it a dog-hole mine?" Shannon asked.
"It looks like something a dog dug into the hillside," Ragus said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "It's not all neat and uniform like the mouth of a modern mine."
It turned out that the dog-hole mine was exactly what they were looking for. They found it at the end of an overgrown road leading into the woods behind Ragus's mobile home. Kudzu had swallowed the entrance and they had to hack their way through. The mouth of the mine was wider than it was high, looking more like a cave than something carved by man. They explored the old mine with their headlamps, finding that the main shaft went over a hundred feet back into the mountain. Branching off to each side were several substantial chambers.
The mine was surprisingly dry, likely a result of being this high on the mountain. The air was also good, which they attributed to the ventilation shafts the original miners had blasted up through the roof. The small holes, not quite big enough for a man to crawl through, created a natural airflow that constantly pulled in fresh air. Judging by the wiring they found and the age of the trash they discovered, they determined that most of the work in the mine had been done in the 1950s, though men might have been pecking at the exposed coal seam for decades before that.
"I think they called these 'wildcat mines'," Conor said. "No union, no permits, and no inspections. Just a bunch of local guys mining and selling the coal to people they knew. A good way to supplement their income. Some of them might have even worked for other mining companies during the day."
"Good way to steal the explosives, wire, and tools you need," Wayne noted.
They decided that the mine would serve as one of their primary cache locations. They spent nearly a month replacing the roof supports with new timbers cut from the hills alongside the mine, then wired in twelve-volt lights using a couple of old car batteries and a small solar panel Conor brought from his place. When they had the infrastructure to an acceptable point, they stored gear on pallets and covered it with squares of clear plastic sheeting. Everything they stored was in some sort of case or packaging that made it safe to leave in the mine environment. Additionally, everything had to be rodent-proof. Motion-sensitive trail cameras were installed near the entrance to monitor any unwelcome guests.
The offsite cache wasn't ideal. Conor had dreamed of a day when he'd be able to jump into the old manlift beside his shop, press the “Down” button, and lower himself into his underground lair. It might still happen one day but he'd resigned himself to the truth that it wasn't going to happen yet.
17
Conor's Compound
> Jewell Ridge, Virginia
When everything on the grill was charred to Conor's liking, he handed out plates and everyone heaped them high with the bounty of their garden and the generous haunch of one local hog. They sat on the porch drinking glasses of water or sun tea. The tea was always disappointing to Conor. No matter how many tiny packets of sugar he added to his, he couldn't match the syrupy sweetness of his favorite fast-food place.
"I don't know what kind of magic those tea elves work in the back of the fecking Bojangles but I can't duplicate it," he grumbled. "Me own tea is a shabby, second-rate imitation. I'm almost embarrassed to even tip a glass of it."
Barb rolled her eyes but everyone else was amused. They were used to Conor's laments about days gone by, that golden age when he could hit a Bojangles drive-through for a couple of biscuits and a barrel of tea.
"Any clue what Browning wants from you?" Wayne asked, cutting his ham with the same grubby pocket knife he used for everything else.
"Could be anything," Conor said. "The guy is a psycho. It could be that he wants me to do an operation or he might just be coming down here to yank my chain a bit. It's hard to say. I'm surprised it took him this long. I was hoping he'd forgotten about me."
"No such luck," Ragus said.
"I could totally see that guy being a psycho," Barb said. "He's got that intensity. What did you ever do to make him hate you so much?"
Each of them had asked Conor that same question at one time or another over the past months and Conor always waved them off. He never gave anyone a straight answer as to what history he shared with Browning. Maybe now was the time. They needed to know the story.
Ultraviolent: Book Six in The Mad Mick Series Page 15