by T J Reeder
The Deputy also said there had been a complete stop in traffic out of Vegas for over two weeks and now that we were here asking questions he was noticing it as suspicious
Well we now knew something was gonna happen and I believed it was gonna be soon. He said SLC had resources but it would be too hard for them to come to help with any speed.
I asked if they had any decent communications set up, he said for sure and we followed him to his office where we found a man sitting at a radio of some kind and that was the extent of my knowledge on radios.
I took a few minutes to think and then asked if there were any Navajo peoples living here. He said sure because a lot of them joined the LDS church, He said he could have one there real fast that spoke the language. I asked if he was sure the man could talk the talk. He smiled and said well “she” can and I know that for a fact. He walked to a door and went thru it only to return in a moment with a middle aged Navajo woman who was introduced as the wife of the deputy, we all laughed at that one.
Sandy and May spoke a greeting to her which made her eyes widen and for her to start rattling off at high speed, Sandy slowly explained the limits on her speech abilities. I heard her say Charlie’s name and the lady became very excited, then thankfully switched to English and said she knew of Charley and his mother who she called “Old Woman” as if it were her name. It’s a damn small world for sure. After explaining why we needed her she was all for it and happy to help out because her grandfather had been a code talker in WW2, smaller world even more! I sat down and took my time writing out what I needed transmitted to The Fort using the frequency used by all our main outposts. I kept it simple and as short as possible; by the time I was done the comm man had made contact with the Fort. The lady took over and rattled off something, then there was a longer comment and one returned. The deputy said she was giving her pedigree so to speak, meaning who she was born to, which clan, and the person on the other end did the same. Sort of “Hi my name is Bill Smith, I was born to the Oklahoma clan and the Texas clan, meaning if a wedding was to be planed everybody knew the blood lines were far apart. That made sense to me of a people living close in an attempt to avoid close blood ties that could cause health issues in the kids. Or so I thought.
Anyway she got to the reason for the contact and as they talked she would translate to us. Although her husband was able to understand a good bit of it, Sandy just shrugged meaning she was lost as it was too fast and complex for her. I can’t even say hello although I think it sounds something like “Yatahea” but I’m not sure.
The upshot was that the Fort with their much better comm equipment had been monitoring radio traffic that had a distinct military flavor to it but they were speaking in some kind of code that meant nothing to anybody at the fort.
Both sides signed off with the call back time set for one hour. We went to the café for lunch with the deputy whose name was Wilfred and his wife whose name was Marylyn.
At lunch she and the girls talked slowly on her part and they were laughing at the misq’s. I think Marylyn had really missed having her own people to talk to. Well that was gonna change damn soon if the plan could be brought together.
We got back just in time to hear the call coming in. After all the radio talk was done Marylyn took the mike over and went to talking to the other end but it sounded like a different person to my ear. He asked if I was there and was told “yes,” he then asked something and Marylyn translated for me, the upshot was that they had made contact with Charley and the canyon and passed the word. Charley said his group would be rolling by sundown; same for the canyon, the Fort would wait for them to get close then join up. I told them to bring the kitchen sink, Marylyn looked at me real funny then smiled as she got it but she had trouble translating it so she just used that one word out loud. It was funny to hear.
It’s so funny to look at a map and see it’s only about eight hours from Shiprock to St George, yet with all the stalled vehicles and trees down who knows how long it might take but I figured three days tops so we had a lot to get done before the troops arrived. It was going to involve heading almost into the lion’s den but I figured we had as much experience as most anybody we might encounter.
So off we went right down the I-25 South just like a Sunday drive. And we saw….nothing, nada, no signs of a army nor even a Boy Scout troop. So on we went seeing no traffic heading north, none going south, we were alone on the planet. We followed the road thru curving canyons and at last broke out onto flat country and scattered houses and finally the town of Littlefield. We turned off to check it out and approached it slowly, nothing was moving except dust in the wind, some dogs running around but no people. No signs of a reason why they weren’t there. We had seen this before but usually with remains of people laying amid expended ammo cases and shot up buildings. This place looked like it had been sucked dry in a flash.
Now I was getting worried and Walker was acting funny so I stopped by a building and leaving the girls I went to the door and opened it. It looked like a tornado went thru it with desks overturned, papers everywhere, and on the carpet what had to be dried blood stains. There was a lot of blood in several places but the place wasn’t shot to bits, it was like somebody walked in and simply shot people where they sat!
I walked outside and closed the door then told the girls what I saw, there was nothing for it but to move on but I really wasn’t up for it. I was really spooked and then to make it worse Walker let out the worst low gut growl I ever heard him make, that had both girls falling out of the truck and behind the doors with guns up. I let Walker out and he tore around the building at a run barking and raising hell so I took off around the other way, and found him standing on a man’s chest all teeth showing and that growl rolling. The man was shaking so hard I thought he was gonna pass out. I called Walker to back off but he ignored me then Sandy spoke from behind me and he did back up very reluctantly. I looked at the man who was very dirty and gaunt looking and looked to be on his last legs. I asked May to bring some water and a couple of candy bars which she did, I told the man to stand up and got him to the shade beside the building where I handed him the bottle of water, he fooled me by not trying to gulp it down in one go, he sipped it slowly and held it before swallowing it. I opened a candy bar and he took small bites washing it down with sips of water. Sandy asked if I remembered when I found her. I did, she had gulped the water and several candy bars and tossed them almost immediately. This man was smart about it.
At last he said “I know you’re not with them or I’d be dead.” I motioned him to keep talking and he told a tale of the small town being hit one day by Army people who just rounded them up and killed any who resisted. They loaded everybody into trucks and rolled out heading south towards Vegas, this he had seen from a distant hill. He had been taking his morning walk with his dog in the desert country and returned to an empty town, he searched but found nothing but the same blood stains I found except he found them fresh. He raced for his home and found the door open and the place empty, his gun safe was gone, the whole damn safe, the gun he kept under the mattress was gone too, he said he was scared to death and ran from house to house finding food on the tables from breakfast, people just gone, he searched for weapons and found nothing, not even a sharp knife. He went to a friend’s house where he found blood stains in several places and bullet holes in the walls.
His friend had put up a fight; all his guns were gone too along with the safe they were in. These people were under some control for sure, somebody was in charge and it showed. I had no doubt we could find a body dump if we looked but that wasn’t on our agenda.
The man, Jason Robbinson said he would like to come with us but I asked him to remain in the area and out of sight and we would pick him up on the way back. He didn’t like it but that was the way it was, I wasn’t going into a bad situation with a stranger behind us.
We rolled out and moved along a fair pace and stopped frequently to scan the area ahead and it was good we did. We
were stopped when we saw a dark spot coming at us from a ways off, when they dropped into a dip we left the road and got out of sight in a low spot then we bailed out and laid down on the crest with our rifles ready.
They came tooling along like they had nothing to worry about; it looked like four men in a crew cab truck. We watched them roll on down the road and we scrambled to the top of the next rise and plopped down in time to see them suddenly brake to a stop and get out, they moved off the road; they were flanking us! They had to have seen the tracks where we turned off. They weren’t real good at their job so I assumed they had been dealing with just ordinary people trying to get to some place better then where they were.
In fact two were carrying cut down shotguns, great if you were in a fire fight in a phone booth. One carried a bolt gun and one had a AR type weapon, those two were first. I dropped back below the hill and quickly screwed the can on the 308, the girls both had their suppressed sub guns so we needed to let them get close. The way they were closing in pretty well cinched it, the AR guy was further out looking to gain some high ground and he was my first shot. When they were within 45 yards of us I took the AR man out with a head shot at about 100 yards, they heard the sound of the supersonic round and were standing looking around when the girls cut their legs out from under them. While they were flopping around we rushed in and disarmed them. They were a sorry looking lot for sure and I was hoping we hadn’t ambushed some poor folks just trying to sneak up on somebody to maybe offer them something to eat or maybe a few cold beers. I wasn’t inclined to think the latter. After we had their hardware and patted them down we used plastic ties to restrain them. The girls kinda got the bleeding stopped so I asked them why they were attacking us, only one answered but said “Fuck you” so I shot him in the head with the suppressed 22 ruger. It may seem harsh but these assholes were going to do it to us plus god knows how much misery they had already spread. I asked again and one said they were part of a big army in Las Vegas and they were looking for prisoners that they could collect a bounty on. Younger females being worth the most but anybody who could work was worth something.
I asked why and was told slave labor and the women had other uses. I was wondering why he was talking so easy when I heard Walker do his low growl. In a second we were on the ground and out of sight, Sandy got Walker into a low spot with her while I made it to a small rise. May had gone completely out of sight. We waited and shortly I saw movement off to my right. It was a man low crawling from bush to bush; I waited and shortly saw three more moving in on us from different directions.
I had clear shots at all of them but wanted to wait a bit so the girls could spot them, I also knew the girls would wait for me to open the ball unless one stepped on top of one of them, and think of the devil etc etc. I heard the 300 blackout quietly pop off to my left and saw one of the people drop, the one I saw first heard nothing, the guy closest to the dead one did but wasn’t sure what he heard, it was really the action working more then the round going off, I figured screw it and dropped the one I was watching. Sandy opened up and stitched the one nearest her spot and May got the forth one. We stayed in place just in case and waited for thirty minutes, when nobody else showed up May eased up onto the high spot we had first used and after a bit made a hand sign that it was all clear.
But to be sure Sandy let Walker go and May got him to come up to her, when he saw the vehicle the others had left a quarter mile away he was off to check it out and was back shortly and flopped in the shade of a bush, I guess that was his all clear.
All the newest gunnies were dead as was one of the two we left alive, the one who was talking had died and the other one wasn’t gonna talk since he was in shock.
Shit, all this crap and all we knew was a bunch of slavers were in Vegas. And I guess we knew that already anyway. Eight more dead and for what? We loaded their weapons and stripped anything they had on them for later inspection and got our ride back on the road, we decided to take their wheels just to confuse the issue.
We headed back to pick up Jason who was shocked to actually see that we had come back for him; he also identified one of the trucks as having belonged to his friend and the AR as belonging to the same man. We put the extra truck in an empty garage, loaded all the guns in the second one and told Jason to follow us. We headed back to St. George where we told it like it was and said we needed to mount a blocking force in a place to keep the enemy penned in until my people could get here.
One place to set it up was in a winding canyon we had driven thru but I had another idea for that and wanted to avoid attracting attention to it. We finally just really beefed up the off ramps and hauled a lot of junk cars down the ramps and formed a solid block that would be hard to breach. I wanted them to see that and think that was it.
I suggested they mount a lookout someplace a couple of miles out and up high and a good ways away from the highway to spy on the spy’s. I figured it would be a while before they made a move depending if anybody actually missed the dirt bags we took out. Hell maybe they were the people who were supposed to watch the city.
I didn’t have a plan outside hopefully finishing this latest problem once and for all, even if we had to chase them right into Vegas itself. And that made me head for the maps again. I wanted to have a blocking force south of Vegas to stop the rats when they ran if they did but it was just not logistically possible in the time we had. Also I didn’t know the exact extent of the enemy’s control of Vegas since it was a really sprawled out place and I couldn’t see a bunch of raiders having that kind of manpower.
After I thought about it a bit I decided we would be the over watch outside the city. I trust us more then others and because we really weren’t comfortable with so many people and we like the privacy and open country.
We found the perfect place after following a dirt road a couple of miles then cut across country and up a steep hill and into a pocket where we would be out of sight and could have a small fire at night to make our coffee.
Once we were settled in we took a sand colored tarp and put it on low poles with plenty of tie downs then sprinkled sand over it and some local bush on it, with the bushes in front of the thing we could lay under it or sit up and see the road in comfort. The girls brought our bed roll and put it under the cover and we were home! With a nice pair of binoculars and a spotting scope we could see the road very well so I figured it was maybe no more then half a mile away. The girls and Walker would hear any vehicle traffic, I never would of course.
We spent the first day just relaxing and talking while keeping an eye on the road. We talked a lot about the fact we had been in so much shit and had escaped without a scratch so far (yeah, I got shot in the ass so bite me.) All we could believe was we were lucky, we would have maybe been toast if Walker hadn’t reminded us of security. I will admit we have some good skill sets, and we work together very well and that counts also, but over all we were well ahead of the game I think because we are observant, we are aware of who is around us. But I think the main thing is that people under estimate us. They see two “cute chicks” and an old man and they never seem to notice that watching me isn’t in their best interest. Most people will watch the male figuring he will be the one to deal with, “Wrong!” Like the dipshit Higgins who tried to sneak shoot me, he in his mode of “male superiority” dismissed the woman as not a problem, bad mistakes, man!
So I guess the answer is we work as a team, we watch everybody, everything, we don’t disregard anything as unimportant until we know for a fact it is. We watch each other’s six and we never sit with our backs to doors or windows. One of us always is in position to see anybody coming thru a door, and the other two are watching the door watcher. I think we read each other’s eyes and subtle body movements like they are open books.
The upshot is so far we have won, one day we may not, I hate to think about losing either one of them. They snuggled closer and Sandy said “You won’t” and May said, “You’re stuck with us for a long time.”…W
itches. But lovely witches. That got smiles and cheek kisses. Finally we left one watching and two napping and Walker on guard. The day passed slowly, the night was beautiful with a gazillion stars for us to watch after we moved the bed out from under the cover. We slept like logs knowing Walker was on duty, yeah right, sleeping on our feet. But an ant couldn’t walk past without him knowing.
Just before day break Sandy woke me saying Walker had alerted and was looking at the highway, we crawled under the tarp and watched a vehicle dropping off several people wearing camo BDU’s that was just like ours, after the vehicle left they headed out in our direction but more toward the city.
They set up an observation post on a hill north of us and closer to town. We spent the day watching the watchers who had set up a camp behind their hill. There was four of them and after watching them move to their OP and how they set up I came to the conclusion they were either former military or had been well trained by somebody who was military.
They pulled back to their camp at dark and didn’t build a fire, nor did we. We spent another night like the one before and at first light watched them getting back into their OP nest. Watching them was as boring as watching paint dry but had to be done.
Finally just at dusk they packed up and headed back toward the highway where the same truck met them and headed south. What they saw was a good barricade with several men manning it. I could only assume the attack was coming soon.
We headed back to town and found that Joe and Willy had arrived and left their equipment a few miles back in the mountains and Charley and his people were moving with the Fort Navajo group which had the lowboys with the tracks. They should be in during the night.
I was feeling the push for time. At daybreak I took the girls and Joe and Willy on a recon so I could look the canyon over with them. It had several really good choke points where we could bottle them up and finish them off.