She sensed he was holding back. Alex usually played the role of cheerleader.
“We have rolls of screen in the basement. We can pop this stuff out and replace it. Same with the slider. We’ll have to board up one side, but it’ll work,” she said.
“Then there’s the rain. Almost every window in the house is broken, and of course, these are custom windows.”
“We’ll be fine. We can cut enough plywood to cover the windows. We prepared for this possibility. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to work for now.”
“One rainstorm and all of the insulation will get soaked. We’ll be living in a mold experiment by the end of September. This house was so perfect,” he hissed, crumpling his cup.
Kate had never seen Alex like this and wondered if it had something to do with the amphetamine tablets. His hands looked steadier, but they still shook while he held onto the cup of water. This was something bigger. Something he didn’t want to tell her.
“It’s still perfect,” she said. “The kids are fine. Your parents are fine. We have everything we need to thrive here. It’ll take time, but we’ll eventually patch up every single hole in this house.”
Alex sipped his water and stared at the lake beyond the trees.
“What’s going on?” she said, grasping his hand on the table.
“I don’t think we can stay here,” he said, slowly shifting his gaze to her.
His eyes looked distant, almost vacant, which terrified her.
“Honey, you’re starting to scare me.”
“I just scraped chunks of internal organs off the walls inside our house. The bloodstains will never come out, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried scrubbing with bleach. We’ll have to sand the spots and repaint them,” he said softly.
“Then we’ll sand them tomorrow,” she said, searching for something in his eyes.
They softened for a moment, watering.
“Ryan’s helmet had two rips in the fabric covering, one right above his left eye. Without the helmet…I couldn’t clean that up.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” she said.
His eyes sharpened. “There’s a reason I wanted to take the marines to Parsonsfield this morning,” Alex said carefully. “I don’t think this Eli Russell character will ever leave us alone.”
“We already agreed on a strategy to handle him.”
“I didn’t want to tell you this earlier, because I didn’t want to start a panic, and I didn’t want to leave you alone here with the kids. The attack this morning is connected to Milton Mills. I killed Eli Russell’s brother on that bridge.”
“This Russell guy is in charge of the Maine Liberty Militia?”
He nodded. “I killed his brother, and apparently, you killed his nephew in Waterboro. He’s never going to stop, and worse yet, he’s somehow convinced his whole gang of shitheads that we’re some kind of Homeland Security-sponsored, covert operations team. Part of the government’s false-flag operation. He’s using this story to recruit people for his militia.”
Alex’s revelation changed everything. No wonder he had been reluctant to let the kids out of the basement. It had nothing to do with the blood on the walls or the stifling heat. He didn’t think they were safe here.
“So, what do we do? Pack up as much as we can and go back to Durham Road until the military deals with Russell?”
“If we leave the area, I don’t think this place will be here when we get back. We have one option as I see it. We could move everyone to Sanford Airport—temporarily. I’m supposed to secure hangar space for the rest of the battalion tomorrow, and Grady said we could grab extra space.”
Kate stared at him in complete disbelief. Now he was driving around the state for Grady?
“What are you doing in Sanford?”
“Maine is about to be designated as a Regional Recovery Zone and—”
“Yeah, I get all of that. I thought you were putting together reports for Grady. Now you’re making trips to Sanford? When were you planning on telling me?”
“This is the first chance we’ve had to sit down and talk since this morning. I think we can make this work,” he said.
“I can’t see how. The idea of living in a hangar doesn’t sound appealing. Better than dead, but there has to be another solution.”
“Just until Russell is put out of business. The airport will have tight security, and we’ll have a battalion of marines around us. I can billet a squad here to keep an eye on the place, so it’s here when we come back. Part of a forward operating base or something like that.”
“Why don’t you just make this a forward operating base now, and we stay?”
Alex smiled. “I might be able to sell that to Grady. Russell won’t move his militia’s base of operations south. It’s too risky. He’ll head north, but not too far away. Keeping a full squad or platoon of marines here as a quick-reaction force makes sense. If Grady doesn’t agree, we’re back to square one.”
“Then we reinforce the defenses we already have with Staff Sergeant Evans and his men,” said Kate.
“Our fallback plan can’t include the marines. Grady could yank them out of here tomorrow depending on his needs.”
“I don’t think he’d do that to you.”
“He’s running a Marine infantry battalion, not a babysitting service. Judging by the scope of operations planned for southern Maine, Grady’s going to need every Marine in the inventory to do his job. We can’t count on any organic support at the house. If he doesn’t buy the forward base idea and pulls the marines out of here, the best we can hope for is a thirty-minute response time for reinforcement—if available.”
“That’s too long,” she said.
“I agree. We need to make a decision on this within the next day or so. Space to house civilians at the airport will vanish quickly once the recovery zone is officially designated.”
“Can we defend this place without the marines?” Kate asked.
She didn’t think so, not with three out of their seven riflemen limited to static positions by their injuries and one out of commission. Charlie, Linda and Ryan could take up their same positions on the second floor, but they’d require assistance to switch windows. Ed’s injuries put him in a different category. They could lay him in the basement to watch over the kids, but that might be the extent of his usefulness in a battle. Putting a rifle in Samantha’s hands didn’t help their overall defensive posture. Asking her for more than a few shotgun blasts in the general direction of the enemy was pushing it.
“With a working thirty-caliber machine gun and seven hundred fifty rounds? It depends on what they throw at us. Same as this morning, I’d say no problem, even with half of our crew injured. If they add a few more .308 rifles to the mix and stick to the trees?” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not so optimistic.”
“The machine gun works?”
“As far as I can tell. Evans plans to test fire it a little later. We also need to fix the gates, or at least harden them to SUV-sized vehicles. If they drive up on us too fast, in large enough numbers, who knows?”
“We’d have some warning, at least,” she said.
“Not until we unscrew the sensor situation. The two damaged transceivers correspond to the eastern approach, which means we have a huge gap in our coverage along Gelder Pond Lane and the gate. We should probably do that before dark.”
“If we have the marines here tonight, we can worry about that tomorrow,” Kate said.
Alex looked relieved by her suggestion, but still hesitant to agree. He nodded slowly and forced a smile, which beat the distant and defeated look he had brought to the table several minutes ago.
“At some point, we’ll have to lay this out for the whole group. Let them weigh into the decision. If I were Charlie and Samantha, I’d be thinking real hard about relocating to their house up near Waterville. If they left, the Walkers wouldn’t be too far behind them,” said Alex.
“Then we better have that meeting sooner than later. If t
he rest of the group decides to leave, we can’t stay, and I don’t want to miss out on Grady’s airport offer. Not with that psychopath running around.”
“I’ll talk to Grady tomorrow and see what he thinks about establishing a forward base in Limerick. If he goes for it, we don’t have to impose a rushed decision on anyone.”
Kate leaned back in her seat, glancing inside the house. “I’d still like to know where everyone stands.”
Chapter 48
EVENT +86:18
Porter, Maine
Eli Russell sat in a wobbly rocking chair on the wide front porch, admiring the vast vegetable garden past the dirt driveway. He didn’t know the first thing about growing vegetables, but he could worry about that next year. Right now, all he had to do was figure out how to harvest everything and store it for the winter. Too bad the farmer hadn’t been friendlier. Maybe they could have worked something out, where he let them live in exchange for running the farm. No big deal. He’d find another farmer or two to take the deal, no matter how far and wide he had to travel. There was no way he could let this bounty go to waste. They’d need every scrap of it to survive the winter, unless they could put a stop to the Homeland invasion within the next few months.
He still wasn’t sure what to make of the Gelder Pond situation. The tactical vehicles arrived after he ordered a general retreat, so technically, the hostile team inside the house stopped the attack without help. He saw at least two sandbag emplacements on the first floor and had to assume they had created reinforced firing positions at the windows. The gray siding around each window had been riddled with .223-caliber bullet holes. Anyone shooting from one of those windows should have been killed immediately. Instead, he lost twenty-nine men, not including the men lost two days earlier in Milton Mills.
No. There was a whole lot more to these Fletchers than met the eye—and he planned to kill every single one of them. Nobody fucked with Eli Russell like this and got away with it. He’d find a way. One of them liked to drive around in a Jeep and cavort with government forces? Sounded like a perfect target for his initial string of attacks.
“Liberty Actual, this is the Liberty Gate. I have two vehicles requesting permission to enter the compound. One containing McCulver and Brown. The other with the escort team. The road looks clear in both directions.”
He grabbed the handheld radio perched on the wide railing in front of him.
“Did you say Brown? Jeff Brown?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did the escort team search the passengers and vehicles thoroughly at the school?”
“Affirmative. No obvious tracking devices. McCulver’s back seat is packed with electronics, which might be worth a second look.”
“It doesn’t matter at this point. Send them on up.”
“Copy. Sending two vehicles your way.”
Eli thought about it for a second. How the hell could Brown have turned up this quickly? Brown would have put some distance between himself and Gelder Pond, staying hidden until things settled. He couldn’t imagine Brown having moved more than a mile or two from the site of the attack, in either direction—and McCulver had no reason to swing that close to Limerick. After leaving the Ossipee Valley Fairgrounds in Porter, McCulver headed east to Route 25, where he’d logically take Route 117 south and work his way around Limerick to reach his home in Hollis. If their stories didn’t make sense, he was pulling the plug on both of them, along with the farm. He hoped it didn’t come to that. He needed both of them.
A gray Suburban, followed closely by a red, four-door sedan, emerged from the distant tree break and raced toward the house, casting long shadows over the green field. A low dust cloud followed the convoy, illuminated by the deep amber rays of sunlight peeking over the western trees.
“Viper One. I want you visible when these cars stop. Don’t crowd us, but make your presence known.”
“Roger. We’ll keep our distance.”
Eli stepped onto the hard ground with his rifle and signaled for the vehicles to continue on the jeep trail that disappeared behind the house. A minute later, he met them in the grassy, makeshift parking lot next to the jeep trail. Viper One, the four men from Bertelson’s squad, appeared between the house and the barn, staying in the shadow cast by the barn. McCulver stepped onto the jeep trail with Brown, who looked unperturbed by the day’s events. The escort team, consisting of two heavily armed men, walked discreetly toward the barn.
He eyed Brown for signs of distress. The man remained impassive, as always. McCulver looked edgy, but that wasn’t unusual either. Upon first impression, nothing looked out of place. Brown’s AR-10 was slung over his shoulder, and McCulver appeared unarmed. Maybe he was being paranoid.
“Look what the cat dragged in!” he said, extending a hand to Brown. “Glad to see your face, though I’m a little surprised to see it so soon.”
Brown shook his hand firmly. “Lucky day, I suppose.”
“Can’t wait to hear your report,” he said, turning to McCulver. “Did Jeff show up at your doorstep? You sure as shit better not have driven back to Limerick.”
“I finished up at my house around 3:45. Figured I might swing close enough to try the handheld. Brown answered on the first call. Picked him up near the Chesterton Farm just outside of town.”
“So you drove through Limerick.”
“The roads were empty,” said McCulver.
“Damn lucky nobody stopped you.”
He was glad McCulver hadn’t run into any trouble. His explosives expertise was irreplaceable. If they couldn’t hit the government head on, as the Gelder Pond encounter had painfully demonstrated, they’d have to rely on the same kind of tactics proven effective against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and isolated ambushes. Still, he was pissed off that he had taken the risk. Driving that close to Limerick didn’t show good judgment, not to mention the fact that they’d been out joyriding.
“So, where the hell have you two been for three hours?” asked Eli.
“Since I had Brown, I thought we’d visit Southern Maine Drilling and Blasting in Windham.”
“You did not drive into Windham.”
“Eli, there’s nobody on the roads, and SMDB is south of town—for a good reason. Most of that reason is sitting in the back of the Suburban. You’re gonna be really happy about my little side trip,” said McCulver, motioning toward the SUV.
Standing behind the Suburban, Eli had one more moment of doubt as McCulver grabbed the handle to open the hatch. What if they had somehow smuggled commandos onto the ground in the back of the truck? Maybe the men guarding the entrance along Norton Hill Road had made their transmission under gunpoint? His eyes darted to the security team near the house.
“Jesus, Eli. Really?” said McCulver, opening the truck’s gate.
Wood crates filled the spacious cargo compartment, stenciled with chemical names that looked sinister, but meant nothing to Eli.
“I couldn’t believe they left this stuff unguarded. Slurry explosives, perfect for setting off bigger bombs or making concealable explosives. I found other stuff too, like dynamite, blasting caps, det cord, detonators, even a little C4. All just sitting there for the taking.”
Eli grinned, no longer mad at McCulver. He’d been wrong. His second in command had shown excellent initiative.
“This is exactly the kind of stuff we’ll need for the upcoming fight. This may sound like sacrilege, but now I know how the insurgents must have felt in Iraq. They couldn’t beat our troops in a face-to-face battle, so they resorted to IEDs, isolated ambushes and targeted sniper operations. The Taliban did the same thing. We have to come up with a list of materials essential to fighting a guerrilla war and start assembling a stockpile—before Uncle Sam gets smart and shuts down our access. I’d say we have a week, probably less. Same goes for our recruitment efforts. Let’s hit Fryeburg, Bridgton and Naples tomorrow. We only look north of here.”
“We’re more or less strangers in th
ose parts,” said McCulver.
“We’ll just have to get acquainted with the good folks of Oxford and Cumberland counties. If we run into trouble rounding up volunteers, we’ll start grabbing folks. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don’t mind dipping south for that. We can start spreading rumors that the government is kidnapping people.”
“I’m not sure kidnapping is a good idea. I’d be concerned about loyalty,” said McCulver.
“They’ll come around once they see what we’re trying to accomplish. If not, they can work on the farm. We’ll need a ton of help getting this harvested.”
“Was it abandoned?”
“I served a few eviction notices,” said Eli, patting his holster.
“I’ll need some help getting this stuff offloaded,” McCulver said. “Best place to store it will be in a basement. Everything but the dynamite is highly stable.”
“There’s a gigantic root cellar attached to the barn. North side. Cool as a cucumber in there,” he said, waving his security detail over.
“Perfect. Hate to blow up the house,” McCulver said with his back turned.
Kevin’s statement bothered him. Blowing Eli to pieces in his sleep solved most of the government’s problems. Without his leadership, the men would throw down their weapons at the first sight of a tactical vehicle. He stared at the back of Kevin’s head as his deputy commander started to offload some of the smaller containers. The man had been alone today for the better part of six hours. He’d have to keep an eye on his old friend.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” said Brown, glancing at McCulver’s back.
“Probably not,” said Eli. “Gutsy move staying back. I thought you had lost your fucking mind, frankly. How many did we kill?”
“Zero.”
“Bullshit. We tore that place apart. You said they were loading up one of the Matvees?”
“Two men and a woman were evacuated. I recognized two of them from the windows above the garage. I hit them hard with my .308 at one point.”
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 97