Lenore approached a confident-looking woman standing next to the cabin with a Mossberg autoloader shotgun cradled in the crook of her left arm. A battered old red pickup sat beside the cabin. Lenore noted a sizable greenhouse beside the cabin and a half-buried structure that she recognized as a smokehouse for curing and smoking meat for long-term storage.
“We mean you no harm,” Lenore said. Her PDW was prepped and ready, though it was still pointed at the ground.
“Sista, if I thought you meant me harm, most of you would be dead already.”
“Sounds like something Carl would say.”
The woman looked every bit of the sixty-seven years Carl gave as her age, hardened by many years of frontier life. Her gray hair was well kept but frizzled, and her face was leathered from sun exposure. She wore beige corduroy pants over trail boots and a gray long-sleeve thermal shirt under an unbuttoned blue sleeveless shirt. Lenore could tell she was the real deal—a prepper, just as Carl had said. The woman lived out in the wilderness, completely off grid and apparently ready for the zombie apocalypse or EMP or whatever global disaster might envelop the country. But she wasn’t prepared for what was coming. She wasn’t prepared for Carl Johnson’s war.
Lenore said, “Nice truck.” The red four-by-four pickup had a couple of rust holes and some impact dents, and it featured four oversized mud tires, an essential feature for poor-weather off-road mobility.
“Ol’ Big Red is gettin’ a bit long in the tooth, but she still gets me to and fro.”
“Ma’am, this would be a good time to jump in Big Red and leave. We’re expecting visitors…of the unfriendly kind. You don’t want to be here when they arrive.”
“Leave? Pffft! That ain’t happenin’.” She turned and waved the group to follow. “Come on inside, and I’ll put some coffee on.” Lenore and her team followed, and the woman said, “I’m Rebecca. You know, I haven’t seen Carl since long before his kid died. Ever since he got wrapped up in all this terrorist bullshit, I figured he’d come knocking at my door one day to lay low. Didn’t figure he’d send a bunch of civvies.”
“You assume we’re with Carl.”
“I watch the news. You’re wearing the same kind of armor he used to take care of that business in Chicago.” She waved Lenore silent even though she faced away. “Nobody else in the northern hemisphere has this kind of armor. Did he tell you where he got that armor?”
“He said the Peru black market.”
“And did he say who procured the armor for him?”
“No, he did not.”
“Well, I’m glad he respected my privacy.”
Lenore paused on the wood planks forming the front porch of the cabin. “So, you’re an arms dealer?”
“Hardly, but I have connections throughout South America from my previous career with the State Department.” Rebecca entered the cabin. “And if you’re expecting company, maybe I can help.”
Lenore was about to explain again that Rebecca wasn’t ready for what was coming, but then she stepped through the doorway. She stopped so suddenly that the line of followers literally bumped into her.
“Well, damn!”
The outside of the cabin was a pitched-roof rustic log construction, but the inside walls, floor, and ceiling were reinforced with concrete. The edge of the wall near the doorway looked six inches thick and reinforced with rebar. The structure could withstand any assault short of a tank, explosives, or missiles. But that’s not what caught her attention.
Mounted on the left wall was a pegboard with metal hooks and brackets like one would find in a garage. One bracket held an RPG with its ordnance loaded and ready. On another bracket hung an old-school 50-cal single-shot rifle with a tripod attached. A couple shotguns, three assault rifles, and half a dozen handguns in a rope bag finished out the wall of weapons.
“Trouble, Boss?” Merc Sixteen peeked his head in the doorway when Lenore stepped sideways. “Well, okay then,” he said over Lenore’s shoulder. “That can do some damage. Pretty impressive for a civvie. Of course, Atlas will plow through this cabin in five seconds flat after they discover it’s bulletproof, but it’s a good start.”
Rebecca said, “It’s going to be a tight fit for everyone, since it’s only four hundred square feet. But at least I have an indoor bathroom. The shower runs on rainwater runoff from the roof, and it’s lukewarm at best. Most days it’s not even that. I sure hope you brought your own food, water, and supplies. I keep a six-month supply of provisions for one person, but a dozen folks will rip through it in a few days.”
Sixteen nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We brought everything we need.” He looked at Lenore. “Boss, if it’s okay with you, me and the boys will set up our defensive placements.”
Rebecca said. “Before you do that, let me show you the bunker. Might make a difference in your plans.”
“That’s okay,” Lenore said with a smile that she hoped wasn’t condescending. “We saw it outside.” It was a small compartment attached to the backside of the cabin with large angled double doors like she’d seen on tornado shelters.
“Oh, no, Honey. That’s just the decoy closet with some canned goods in it. That’s a head-fake.”
“Now I know you’ve spent time with Carl.”
“He spent some time up here with me a ways back, so I got to know him quite well.” Rebecca stepped over to the old wood stove, removed a teakettle from one of the two burners, and poured the steaming coffee into a mug on the table in front of a couch-bed. “You know he’s a pretty decent chess player, right?”
She retrieved an ash-covered miniature shovel against the wall and inserted the handle into a fitting on the back of the stove, then leaned her weight into the lever. The stove, its logs still burning inside, and the mismatched ceramic tiles covering the floor in front, all pivoted to the left. The iron bar supporting the stove at the pivot point was encased inside the exhaust pipe that extended up through the ceiling. The pivoted stove revealed narrow steps into the darkness under the cabin floor.
“Follow me and be mindful of splinters.”
Cummings said, “Sixteen, you’re with us. Six, Seventeen, get everyone comfortable.”
Rebecca descended first. A single low-watt bulb lit the narrow stairwell from the bottom, casting shadows on everyone following Rebecca. The rotted wood walls looked like they could cave in at any moment and dirt that had crept between the boards now covered the concrete steps.
“And don’t worry. Everything down here is reinforced concrete too. The wood is just for show.”
Lenore said, “Another head-fake?”
“Uh-huh.”
Sixteen said, “I like this woman.”
Lenore said, “How do you know Carl?”
“I met him about fifteen years ago at an art gallery over in Taos. I’d just relocated from New York, and I told him I came out here to build an off-grid sanctuary. It was right after Nine-Eleven. He just rolled his eyes when I told him the government was eventually going to take all our rights and freedoms. Back then, I thought they were going to come and take our guns, but now I realize they were all along just planning to take our internet. With that, they control everything. Everybody using tech is traceable.”
Lenore chuckled.
Rebecca led the way down the steps, talking over her shoulder. “That’s why I built that little storage unit you saw on the back of the cabin. It’s kind of a fake storm shelter. I always told Carl, let them see what they want to see; make them find what you want them to find.”
“I get it. You want intruders to find the small bunker in back of the cabin so they think they’ve found all your supplies and then leave.”
“And I want them to think this wood door is flimsy enough to break through—”
“Because the walls look like the dirt is held in place by rotten boards,” Sixteen said.
“And when they force the door open, they find this.”
Cummings saw a second concrete door behind the flimsy wooden door. A hand grenade was ho
oked to a pin in the top-center of the concrete door and the grenade’s pin was wired to an unconnected hook and chain that could be connected to the wooden door. Opening the flimsy wood door would pull the pin and kill whoever was standing at the base of the stairs and anyone else in the stairwell.
“Won’t be enough time to retreat back upstairs.”
Rebecca hauled the concrete door open with some effort and continued down yet another concrete stairwell to the left. These stairs went twice as deep as the first until Lenore and her crowd passed through another concrete door into a bunker room as big as the topside cabin. The walls were lined with metal shelves of cans, bottles of water, food supplies, and blankets.
Rebecca waved her arm around the room. “We’re about fifty feet below ground, and it stays a nice sixty degrees year-round. When the party starts, we’ll just wait them out down here.”
Lenore nodded. “It’s a good start.”
Sixteen added, “And unless they have ground-penetrating radar, they won’t know this room is here.”
“Well,” Rebecca added. “Carl made sure I filed electronic floor plans of the cabin with the County to get a building permit. But we accidentally left the bunker off the design.”
“The next wave will figure it out pretty quick when the grenade goes off behind the fake door,” Lenore said. “But chances are low they’ll bring a bunker buster with them.”
Sixteen said, “They’ll figure out how to get in here, and I’m sure they’ll have enough explosives with them. They’re not going to quit.”
“In that case, we use the escape door.” Rebecca pointed at the far wall of shelves. She hauled on a hidden handle and the whole wall opened on well-greased hinges. The shelves perfectly dovetailed precisely with those on the wall.
Sixteen said, “Your attention to detail is amazing. I’m guessing you built this all by yourself?”
Rebecca beamed. “Not bad, eh? But this was as far as I could get before I ran into boulders.”
The path beyond the door was unfinished, just a dark meandering path between huge boulders. The floor of the path was paved with wood boards.
“You know that gully east of the cabin where the seasonal river runs?”
“We saw it from the air.”
“This tunnel emerges in the gully, in a small cave carved out by the water flow. After that, we’re afoot.”
Sixteen nodded. “We’re going to need a layered defense in the gully, or they’ll bury us out there. And let’s park that red truck a mile downstream so we’ll have a bug-out vehicle if things get real bad.”
“Agreed,” Lenore said. She looked at Sixteen. “Get back upstairs, get the lay of the land, and get our defenses set up. I figure it’ll take Atlas only a few hours to find us. They have pretty much the same computer and satellite capability we have.”
“Copy that. We’ll get everything set up, then get everyone trained and practicing escape prep.”
Everyone filed up the steps, back to the cabin, but Lenore held Rebecca back. “What’s your history with Carl, Rebecca?” she said. “I need to know all the variables.”
Rebecca regarded her for a moment. “I told you I met him when I first came out here from New York?”
Lenore nodded.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the way it happened.”
A distant look in the woman’s eyes told Lenore instantly the kind of trauma she was about to speak about. Because of Carl, Lenore herself was intimately familiar with that kind of trauma.
Rebecca continued. “I came out here with a man, and our relationship deteriorated quickly because he couldn’t get work and I can be kind of…” She pretended to straighten some pressure jars of rations. “Well, he became abusive and…” She stood straight and looked Lenore in the eyes. “No, he just got drunk one night and beat the shit out of me, plain and simple, and then he kicked me out of the house. I vaguely remember wandering along the main gallery road of the Taos Square.”
Then she smiled at a fifteen-year-old memory. “I was cold and hungry, bloody and dazed, and I had no coat and no money, no place to go, and no one I could call. I was going to die that night. It was going to be way below freezing. So, I stopped in the doorway of this art gallery and was just looking around for place on the ground where I could just lay down and die. And then he walked out of the gallery and just stood there looking at me.
“I was humiliated and filthy. I had bruises and dried blood everywhere. His eyes teared up and he just unzipped his coat and wrapped me up in a warm embrace, and I cried and cried. He pulled me inside that gallery and the people…Well, it’s Taos. They hugged me and fed me and cleaned me up. They took me to the doctor the next day and got the sheriff to arrest my boyfriend. Carl paid for my attorney and drove up from Albuquerque almost every weekend for a whole year to visit.
“I was useless and depressed because I couldn’t get a job and support myself. And Carl…he took care of me. Spent all his savings paying my rent and utilities and food. And paying for this.” She waved a hand around the bunker and shrugged. “I asked him why, but he just said he sensed I was a caregiver, and that he was taking care of me so I could take care of others. He loaned me the money to build and never asked for it back. Probably knew I could never afford to pay him back. But he never asked for anything. Never required anything of me. He would just say, ‘It’s what we do for our people when we’re able.’”
“So this is you paying him back?”
Rebecca nodded. “I know he’s been in trouble recently, so when he called, I didn’t hesitate. He said he was sending some people up who needed my help. This is the only kind of help I can give, and he knew I would.”
Lenore studied the woman as she spoke. She was slender and strong looking, about five-foot-three and had a full head of silver-gray hair. She looked like a woman who had run away from the trappings of civilized society, like someone who had spent her last fifteen years working the land. Her gaze, though, was rock steady. She wasn’t someone who could be intimidated.
An image of the Carl Johnson she knew now flooded Lenore’s mind. She tried to equate the savage man she’d helped create with a version of him from fifteen years ago. She tried to picture today’s Carl Johnson gently holding a domestic violence victim, caring for her for a year. And suddenly, she could picture that. At his core, the same Carl Johnson who kept saving her, her daughter, and the president was that younger man. He was the same man who held Lisette and gazed at her with those caring brown eyes. He just had training and weapons now…and he had that dark side, a fully developed killer instinct.
The thought hit Lenore like a sucker punch to the gut. Rebecca’s Carl was the same man who had strapped her and Lisette naked to a table and threatened to kill her daughter. The shrink said Lisette had blocked out the trauma of what Carl had done to them. All she remembered was that he saved them from the terrorists. He kept saving them, and now he was Lisette’s hero. She loved him like a protective father she’d never known. The shrink said one day Lisette would remember her ordeal, and when that day came, next year or in ten years, her whole world would come crashing down.
How in the world can I let that man hug my daughter after what he did to us?
Rebecca touched Lenore’s arm, making her flinch. “Looks like I’m not the only one with history with him.”
Lenore growled under her breath. “It’s complicated. Let’s get topside.”
If he touches my daughter again, he’s a dead man.
Lenore stood on the porch long after nightfall, contemplating their chances of surviving to see the next sunset. Sixteen strode up.
“Hey, Boss. Let me update you.”
Lenore smiled in the darkness. Sixteen was the merc who had challenged her ability to lead. The truth was, during her long FBI career, she never desired command or leadership. She could lead but always preferred to be investigating crimes. The intellectual work thrilled her; head-butting with the egos of men did not.
“We’re all set up out yonder.
Even got the plane camouflaged properly.”
“Properly?” Rebecca ended the word with a snort. She stood in the doorway and Lenore hadn’t even realized she’d crept up on her. “Hell, I can practically see half the plane from here…in the dark!”
“Half?” Sixteen chuckled. “Well, I don’t want ’em to see that much.”
“Oh my gawd. You actually want them to see it, don’t you?”
Sixteen shrugged. “We know they’re going to find us. If they’re coming, it’s better they come on our timetable. They probably already have a high-altitude spy plane or a civilian satellite over this part of New Mexico, though I’d opt for the spy plane, one with side-aperture radar. It’ll find the plane despite the darkness, much more easily than a satellite. They’ll probably send the plane back over in the morning. I figure we’ll have guests tomorrow afternoon.”
Lenore nodded. “You practiced the evac?”
“Roger that. When the alarm is sounded, we can get all the civvies down into the safe bunker in four minutes, thirteen seconds.”
Lenore grimaced. “How much warning will we get if they send a cruise missile?”
“We put a radar unit up on the mesa two miles west of here. If the cruise missile hugs the ground, we’ll get a two-minute, fourteen-second warning, maybe a little more if Carl’s missile-defense system works.”
“Missiles? You have missiles?” Rebecca said.
Lenore nodded. “Carl layers his responses to threats with multiple reactions and head fakes. Atlas used a military cruise missile on his team before and hurt them badly, so he figures they’ll try that again. But if we use radar for inbound detection, they’ll just take out our radar and we’ll be blind, so we have passive sonic detectors a couple miles away since a cruise missile tends to be a low flier. When the sonic detectors hear it, we light it up with radar and shoot it down before Atlas can take out our radar.”
Rebecca didn’t seem impressed. “Yeah, well, what if they have two missiles.”
“Ha!” Sixteen slapped his knee. “That’s what I said! And you know what he said? ‘That’s why we’ll have a second antimissile battery next to the cabin.’”
American Terrorist Trilogy Page 89