Jack gestured with a thumb. “There are four behind the barn and some to the north.”
“What were you after here? Did you think we’re sitting on a pile of gold or a fountain of whisky?” an exacerbated Kaplan said with a point at the three raider prisoners.
They said nothing, staring sullenly at the man.
Kaplan looked at Jack. “And what of these three bastards?”
“We’ll take them to Geneva.”
“Fine. Let the law handle them. What about all those bodies?”
“We’ll get some wagons and volunteers up here and get rid of them. I would imagine word is out. Help ought to be coming.”
“I thought I might have to feed them to the hogs, because I am surely not in shape or the mood to bury them.”
“Father,” said the oldest daughter, “why don’t the boys saddle a horse for you?”
“That’s not necessary,” Sean said. He led a horse to the front of the house, Mrs. Kaplan walking alongside. “This one was saddled and ready in the barn.”
“I tacked him up for your trip this morning,” one of the teenage boys said. “Remember?”
Kaplan glared and gestured toward the field. “No, I didn’t. It’s been a busy morning and it slipped my mind.” He held his hand out for the reins. He paused, wondering how he would climb aboard with an injured leg.
“Let us give you a hand,” Jack said. He gestured at Sean to assist. Between the two of them, they were able to get the man into the saddle without much pain.
“Awfully nice of you,” Kaplan said.
“Very nice,” the daughter said with a dazzling smile aimed at Jack. She was nearly as tall as the Ranger Sergeant.
Kaplan leaned over in the saddle toward Jack. “My daughter, Priscilla. You two make a handsome couple. She’s available, Sergeant…?”
“Traipse. Jack, very much spoken for, Traipse.” He pointed at Will. “Ranger Will Dando on the other hand is available.” Will went wide-eyed. “As a matter of fact, he’s considered a living, walking, talking, treasure among Rangers. Resourceful too. Snuck into Kings Town while the siege still held, then turned around and helped liberate the place and take down Joe Crow. Has a scar to show for it.”
Priscilla smiled, looking at the Ranger. “Really now?”
“Truth. He had so many female admirers down there they had to transfer him up here. It interfered with Ranger operations. To cap it all off, he’s not looking for admirers, he’s just looking for a wholesome young lady he can settle down with, but that’s not easy when you’re Will Dando.”
“Perhaps Ranger Dando might pay a visit when we’ve recovered and he’s available.”
Mrs. Kaplan gave Jack a hard look, then smiled and shook her head. “Priscilla, might you help me see if we have any unbroken glasses and a pitcher. I’m sure these Rangers would like something to drink.”
Priscilla went inside with her mother and one of her brothers. The sound of closing horses had everyone looking warily toward the road. It was Sergeant Tucker’s team. Kaplan spurred his horse toward them. “I’ll have a word with them.”
“Hey, Jack,” Sean said. “That Appaloosa of yours led my horse and the spare in. They’re by the barn. I want to show you something.”
“About Jenny?”
He shook his head. “Something else.”
Kaplan was busy talking to Tucker. Jack walked toward Will. “Keep an eye on the prisoners. I’ll be right back.”
“Got it. Say, what the hell was all that with the girl?”
“All of what? I just put in a good word for you, that’s it. Besides, do you have any idea what Jennifer Lewis would do if she knew a six-foot blonde farm girl was pursuing me? I don’t want to get shot.”
“She’s half a head taller than me.”
“Yeah. Maybe your kids will take after her. You already have a lot on common. You’re blond, she’s blonde. Stop complaining. You saw her, and you said she sounded nice over the radio. Now you’ve been introduced to her and she’s interested. You can thank me later.”
“You’re a real… I don’t know what, Sergeant,” Will said as Jack and Sean went to the barn.
“Follow me,” Sean said as they stepped inside. They stopped at the stall where the little girl sat with her dog. Lucy was a redbone hound and she nursed a handful of newborn puppies.
The girl was next to the dog and gently rubbed her head. “She’s my friend. Friends look out for friends.”
Sean elbowed Jack. “You remember telling me to let you know what makes a man crazy enough to join the Rangers if I ever figured it out?”
“You said it twice in the last few days, Sean. Of course I remember.”
“I think I figured it out.”
Jack smiled and glanced at his friend. “Damned if you aren’t right, Sean. Damned if you aren’t right.”
. . . . .
The Rangers gathered in front of Kaplan’s house. They had brought in the herd of raider horses, stacked and covered the bodies of the dead raiders, secured the weapons, and were awaiting a group from Geneva and surrounding homesteads to arrive to assist the Kaplans and haul off the bodies.
Tucker’s team had caught up to the fleeing raiders easily. All but one surrendered, and he was the reason for the shots the others had heard earlier. They disarmed the remainder and sent them off unarmed and horseless.
“They wouldn’t stand trial in all likelihood,” Tucker said. This isn’t really the Freelands. We’ll auction the raider horses and arms and give the money to the Kaplans. It’s the best we can do.”
“Do we know why the Cornhusks did this?” Jack asked. “Lee Ellison told me they’d steer clear.”
Tucker gave him a confused look. “When did that happen?”
Jack told them what occurred the night Harl and Jason died.
Tucker and the other Rangers save for Sean burst out laughing. “That explains a whole lot,” Tucker said. “You’re the guy who blew the whole thing up, Jack. The Cornhusks have gone to war with one another. All we knew was Ellison made a decision that pissed off half of the Cornhusks. I’d guess they didn’t like somebody killing one of their own in broad moonlight in the middle of Princeton and then Ellison letting that person depart without a fight. You wanted a clear passage east, well, as long as the Cornhusks are killing each other, they’re not going to be looking for a team of Rangers out in the wilds.”
“What about the raiders that attacked here?”
“A splinter group out of Rantoul. They didn’t want to pick sides, so they went joyriding instead. Hit some places farther north before they got here.”
Jack shook his head. “A raider civil war…. That wasn’t the plan.”
“Plans are what you do to fill time before the real problems start, Jack. Don’t sweat it. The Cornhusks are cornholing themselves right now, and that’s a positive.”
“And the Kaplan family?”
“Are going to be all right. And the raider threat just got a lot smaller in these parts. Near twenty dead, the rest horseless and disarmed. Won’t last forever, but it’s none too shabby.”
“So now we can worry about the rads, TGG, atomic weapons, and trips into the Blastlands,” Stan Dando said. He smiled. “Maybe you can go have a talk with the rads and TGG and clean up the entire north. Jack Traipse, peacemaker.”
Jack sighed and looked skyward. “What did I do to deserve this?”
“The scourge of raiders, rads, and necros. Bringing peace through superior firepower and bloodbath diplomacy.”
Jack glared. “I am so glad you’re here, Stan.”
“Thanks, Jack. I always say you’re one of the few people who appreciates what I bring to the table.”
. . . . .
13
Old Hands, Old Knowledge, and New Tasks
. . . . .
The Rangers were back in Geneva a few hours later. Jack and Sean reported to Lieutenant Geiger and briefed him on their actions over the past few days, detailing the incidents with the raiders.
“So we can close the book on Misters Marcus and Cooper,” Dan said. “It’s unfortunate, but I think this might have been the best solution, as harsh as that might sound.”
Sean nodded. “We marked Jason’s grave just in case.”
“All right. I’ll relay that to the Marcus family. Did you learn anything on your recon?”
“I think we’ll go to the south of Lane, even if we need to go into the northern part of the Blastlands,” Jack said. “Not much population and if TGG’s teams are north, we’d stay clear of them as well until we were near their operations.”
“Sounds good. Show it to me on the map later.”
“I guess we should have let you know what happened with the Cornhusks before we went east.”
“Not necessarily. It would have cost you a day or two, time we might not want to lose. Barlo and company have a great deal of information for you.”
“We’ll go talk to them.”
“We?” Sean said. “You just tell me what, when, and how. I already know where.”
Jack turned to Lieutenant Geiger. “I forgot to mention Captain Trahearn here is on the Blastlands mission. Told me so himself. He was barking orders, running communications, dictating tactics, and all that.”
Geiger smiled. “Well, that means he’ll need sit in with you and the intel folks.”
“I doubt I’ll be able to add much—”
Geiger raised a hand. “You’re on board now, Ranger Trahearn.”
Sean shook his head. “So I have to take the ride.” He stood and looked at Jack. “Let’s get this over with.”
The two Rangers walked into the training room and saw Barbara Louis placing a pair of three-ring binders on the table while Amanda and Jerry Michaels sorted through a stack of papers.
“That for us?” Jack said.
Barlo nodded and pointed at the table. “Have a seat.”
“Dan said you have news.”
“Yes, both good and bad, Jack. They are really one and the same.”
“You’re already confusing me. Start with the bad.”
“In short, we do not have a complete picture of the situation over in the Blastlands. We have a lot of holes in our knowledge and what we don’t know might make things difficult for you.”
“The good?”
“We have a much better idea of what’s going on than we did before we had all the intel resources. We know much more than we did a few days ago, but not nearly enough to paint a clear picture.”
“Let’s hear what we have then.”
Captain Drake walked into the building and approached the table. “Mind if I sit in?”
Jack shook his head and held up a hand. “I don’t think so, sir. Art’s told us all stories about—”
Drake laughed. “He’s got you subbing for him while he’s not here.”
“Please join in,” Jack said with a smile.
Barlo flipped through some papers. “First off, you were spot on about TGG’s use of radioactive materials against areas of alien incursion, Jack. They call it salting and seeding. I quote, ‘We salt the defiled ground that breeds the invader and seed the ground of our future.’ I’m not sure what the latter means, but you get the idea.”
“How long will the area be toxic after they do that?” Drake asked.
“I’m not an expert on nuclear contamination, but it would be highly toxic for decades, and dangerous for longer than that. We’re not just talking fallout here, as bad as that is. This is fissionable or fusion fuel like uranium and plutonium they are throwing around.”
“Any evidence they’re trying to create atomic weapons?” Jack said.
Amanda shook her head. “Nothing to indicate they have a program in place, but we did find this in some of material you brought in. I’ll read it. It’s a quote from one of their leaders, what they call an Apostle, from twenty years ago. He said, ‘Nuclear fire shaped our world. It brought about our rise to dominance. We’ll need such weapons ourselves in the coming years. We’ll need them to retain our rightful place in this new world.’ That doesn’t mean they have them or are actually trying to assemble one, but it does show they’ve had the desire for such devices for a long time.”
“Is there any chance the warhead in the silo might still be functional?” Jack said. “What about the Soviet weapons?”
Barlo sighed. “It’s a possibility. That said, without maintenance for thirty years it would not work correctly in all likelihood. We don’t know where the military was in the decommissioning process. Not very far along obviously. We don’t even know what the process was. The missile and warhead are still in the silo, but it was not functional when they started hurling nukes all over the planet. If the military removed certain components from the warhead, it may just be a nearly seven-hundred-pound storage container for radioactive material. The other warheads cannot be in operational condition. It’s possible they may have sustained severe enough damage to expose the radioactive material inside”
“A third of a ton?” Sean said. “They’re going to haul that and some others all the way to the Rockies?”
“That’s the plan,” Michaels said. “There is mention of a special cart they will construct on site for the purpose.”
“When we were trailing TGG up north we saw men who were pulling carts. They never carried arms. Some of those that did carry rifles shot some of the unarmed men when they tried to run during a fight. Maybe they are forced to pull carts?”
“Those people might be what TGG calls Low Ones,” Michaels said. “We don’t know what that means, but there was mention of their employment on these forays east.”
“I saw that in the report,” Drake said. “Possibly slave or forced labor? It’s never been a consideration TGG might do that, but then again we don’t actually know that much about The Greater Good. How many people would they need to haul something like that?”
“We have no way of knowing,” Barlo said. “More than a few would be my guess.”
“They are going to all this trouble to recover a seven hundred pound weapon from a hardened silo,” Jack said to know one in particular. He looked across the room, thinking out loud. “They’re expending huge amounts of explosives and effort just for that single warhead. What if they dismantle the thing and use it as a template to make other weapons, or copy components, something like that? Maybe the explosives inside are a design they can replicate?” He stopped and smiled in embarrassment when he noticed everyone was looking at him. “Sorry, just letting my brain run free.”
Barlo laughed softly. “That’s something worth considering. It may be outside of their present capabilities, at least I pray it is.” She looked at Amanda. “You found something about explosives, didn’t you?”
Amanda nodded and held up a finger, then started flipping through pages.
Drake nodded and looked at Jack. “There has to be a reason. They truly want what’s in that silo. I saw some of the paperwork about that yesterday. The lid on top weighs in the neighborhood of a hundred tons. That’s how serious they are about getting in there. How about you keep them from recovering this device? Period. Do that, and all the rest doesn’t matter.”
“That’s the plan, Captain. What do we do about a missile and warhead? We can’t carry it back here.”
Drake rubbed his jaw line. “If you can secure the silo, maybe get TGG and the rads off the thing… maybe we can get some of the techs or scientists to come up with something.”
“Got it,” Amanda said. “An Air Force document concerning PBX Nine-Four-Zero-Four. PBX stands for Polymer Bonded Explosive. It seems to be an explosive formed into a shape for specific purposes. In this case, it’s part of the system to make a one-point-two megaton warhead go boom. The Air Force had concerns prior to the Calamity the PBX Nine-Four-Zero-Four was decomposing as it aged. They feared it was becoming more and more pressure sensitive as time went on.”
Jack grimaced. “Pressure sensitive. As in it will explode under enough pressure?”
Amand
a nodded.
“How much pressure? A rockslide lands on top of it and it explodes? Some rad hugs the thing and ka-boom? A puff of wind and we have ourselves a mushroom cloud?”
“We don’t know, Jack. The military folks were worrying about it over three decades ago. We have no way to know what it means now. If pressure could cause the PBX to explode, it wouldn’t cause a mushroom cloud. The explosives would need to detonate with precision, with electronics making that happen. Anything else would probably be a much lower yield atomic detonation or maybe it just blasts radioactive material everywhere.”
Barlo agreed. “Any one of those is nasty.”
“Maybe this PBX has degraded to the point it’s not explosive at all by now?” Sean said.
“Maybe it’s the other side,” Michaels said. “Maybe it’s hyper sensitive. Jack’s puff of wind?”
Jack grunted. “Maybe they’ll blow themselves up and make our job a lot easier. We have an idea about the missiles, what about where we are going? Do we know that?”
Michaels slid his chair from the table and stood. He slid one of the map stands next to the table and pointed at a spot on the map, a dot among dozens of other dots marked with letter and number designators. “Right there… maybe thereabouts is a better term.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
Barlo laughed. “Jerry is correct. That is the destination point for the teams from TGG’s Homeland, a facility called Lima-Zero-One.”
“That’s not very far away from where Jack and I scouted,” Sean said, studying the map. “We won’t have to go very far into the Blastlands then.”
Barlo shook her head. “Not so fast. Lima-Zero-One is a Launch Control Facility, or LCF. Some documents refer to them as Missile Alert Facilities, but we’re going with LCF. There is no silo there.” The faces of Drake, Trahearn, and Traipse betrayed their feelings. Barlo held up a hand. “Hold on. A site like this controlled a flight of ten missile silos, and in a pinch could fire missiles from all fifty silos in its squadron.”
Captain Drake drummed his fingers on the tabletop in agitation. “All told, how many silos were in this missile field?”
The Blastlands Saga Page 55