“The question that remains, for me at least,” Sanford said, “is what is really going on in the rest of the country? How is the rest of the United States really doing, civilian and military? The Colonel has been told repeatedly that the rest of the country has basically already been subdued and that the Southeast is the last holdout.”
Mallory snorted. “I find that hard to believe,” she said. “I’ve never lived there, but I just can’t see Texas rolling over any quicker than we have.”
“My point exactly,” Sanford said. “Or Utah, Wyoming, Montana or a half-a-dozen other states I can think of off the top of my head. On the surface it sounds good, but if you think about it for just a few minutes it starts to fall apart. I don’t think they planned on anyone else hearing their conversations or having time to really consider the implications of what they’re saying.”
“So,” Mallory said. “What do we do about it?”
“I think we need to make contact with them,” Sanford said. “We need to make direct contact with other bases and groups of people around the country.”
“Okay,” Mallory said. “And I suppose you’ve thought about how we might do that?”
“Actually, yes,” Sanford said.
…
“I’m not sure,” Mallory said, “if that’s just risky, bold, or outright insane. I’m leaning towards the latter.”
“Yes,” Sanford said, “it’s risky, but it’s a calculated risk. Sitting here and not doing anything is what’s insane. We know what’s going on is wrong. The Colonel has you squarely in his sights, and we need to know what’s really happening everywhere else. This is at least doing something, and you can’t just hunker down with the civilian population there. We have to take the fight to the enemy.”
Mallory knew Sanford was right, not that she needed convincing. Everything they did, every move they considered, needed to be in light of the fact that they weren’t safe…they were, in fact, at war.
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t say it wasn’t worth doing, just that it was nuts. They’ll be going in blind with no prior contact and no idea what the situation is on the ground ahead of time.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Sanford said. “And ultimately it’s not my call to make. They won’t be coming from Rucker, they can’t. They’re your birds.”
Mallory paused as she thought about their options.
“So we send them out with a cover story,” Joel said with a shrug.
“Go on,” Mallory said.
“Well,” Joel said, “I just came up with the idea so give me a minute.”
Stewart stifled a chuckle but he, too, started thinking about what cover story would pass muster.
“We have a suggestion,” Mallory said over the radio, “but haven’t fleshed it out yet.”
“I’m all ears,” Sanford said.
“We craft a couple of cover stories for them,” she said, “at least two. One for groups that seem to be loyal to this…cabal in Colorado, and another for groups that look like they’re pushing back.”
“And a way for them to tell the two apart,” Halstead added.
There was silence on the air for several seconds as both sides began trying to work out details amongst themselves.
“How about Diego and his men say they represent the group in Colorado,” Sanford finally said. “I’m pretty sure we have enough information to put together a convincing cover, at least until or unless a group actually tries to verify their origin.”
“They’re from a unit that was overrun by rebelling civilians,” Stewart said. “Wait, no, bad idea. Worst-case scenario is the group they are in contact with decides the rebels need to be put down…never mind.”
“They’re just in transit from one base to another,” Joel said. “They just need to fill up on the way to transfer the Black Hawks.”
“How about the truth,” Stewart added, trying to make up for the bad idea he’d just had. “Assuming it ever happens, once it’s obvious that the base is in the rebel camp they could just be honest about why they’re there.”
Halstead nodded and added, “They may even be in communication with other bases,” he said. “It’d probably save time in the long run.”
Mallory shared their ideas with Sanford.
“Yeah,” Sanford said. “I think that’ll work.”
…
“Where in the world,” Travis asked, nodding to the two pickup trucks full of coal, “did you get all that? I know it wasn’t my old supplier because he cleared out months ago and there weren’t more than a couple of pounds left when I went by.”
“For the time being,” Eric said, “that’s for me to know and hopefully you to never find out. I’ve got a couple of pieces that I need forged though, and I figured a hotter forge would probably be better and now was as good a time as any to bring this to you.”
“He’s in the shop now,” Travis said, “working on some horseshoes. Let’s take him some coal and show him what you need done.”
Eric reached into the cab of his truck and pulled out the two pitman arms with the broken ends and then grabbed a burlap sack with about fifteen pounds of coal from the back.
“Looks like a linkage of some kind,” Travis said when he caught sight of the broken pieces.
“Pitman arms for a gear assembly,” Eric said.
“Whatever it was must have been pretty rough,” Travis said, “or they weren’t taken care of for the ends to come apart like that.”
“They’re from a windmill gearbox,” Eric finally said. “I guess there were some really bad storms a couple of years ago and the wind wheel hadn’t been locked like it should have been. It could have been worse; the gearbox could have torn itself apart.”
The smithy had an open front and they could hear the farrier hammering on what Eric assumed was a horseshoe as they got closer. Travis waited until a break when the metal needed to be reheated and got his attention.
“How’s this batch of charcoal working out,” Travis asked.
The farrier shrugged. “About the same as the last,” he said. “I’m finally getting used to the difference in how long things take, that’s all.”
Travis held out the bag of coal. “Will this help,” he asked.
The farrier opened the bag and shook his head. “Travis,” he said, “your timing is abysmal, you know that? You wait until I’m finally getting into the groove with the charcoal and then you show up with real coal. How much can we get?”
“I’m pretty sure we can get you as much as you need,” Eric said. “I’ve got two pickup truck beds full outside right now.”
The farriers face lit up. “I think I’d be willing to forget everything I’ve taught myself about using charcoal if that’s the case.”
“There’s something Eric needs you to look at,” Travis said. “See if you can fix or replace a couple of pieces.”
Eric handed over the pitman arms.
The farrier examined them for about a half a minute, including tapping them on the anvil and striking them with a hammer in a couple of different places to see how they sounded.
“It sounds like cast iron,” the farrier said, “but it’s lighter than I would expect it to be. I’m positive I can make replacements but I won’t know if I can repair them until I heat ‘em up. I’d want to have the replacements already made before I did that. How quick do you need them?”
“They’re for the ranch,” Eric said.
“In that case,” the farrier replied, “do you have a couple of hours to kill? I’ve got some stock that I can use for the replacements this afternoon.”
…
Kyle and William were in the hangar Kyle had set aside as a workshop. William slowly spun the axle for the wind wheel with a handle to check the function of the gearbox now that it was reassembled. The pitman arms had fit almost perfectly and required just a little filing to clean up the hole on one end.
After examining everything in the gearbox, Kyle took over and cranked the wheel as fast as he
could for a minute. As far as he could tell, it all seemed to be working properly. The last thing to do was fill the oil reservoir and make sure the oil rings were working right to keep things lubricated.
“How’s it going,” Eric asked as he walked into the hangar.
“Pretty good,” Kyle said. “He did a good job and I’m just about ready to button this up. We have wooden templates of all the parts so, theoretically, we should be able to build more.”
Kyle looked over at William and said, “Couldn’t have done it as quick without William here.”
William blushed but didn’t say anything. He’d been very quiet ever since the group had split off from Earl’s group. Every once in a while Kyle could get him to break out of his silence, and it was happening more often the longer they were on their own and the more time they spent together, but it still took a lot to get him to talk.
“Let’s make a couple more sets of templates,” Eric said
Kyle nodded. If anything happened to the set they had he’d be taking this one apart again to make new patterns. The workshop now had a drill press, table saw, and band saw powered by a propane generator from one of the RVs. Eric had also gotten several wood planks in different thicknesses appropriate for their templates from the ranch the last time he was down there.
“Up to giving me a hand on the blanks,” Kyle asked William.
“Yeah,” he said with a small smile.
He was warming up to Kyle, but it was going to take time.
…
Randy Carlisle, the farmer who had been their initial contact with the loose-knit group of farmers and ranchers frowned.
“Maybe,” he said, “probably even. The problem is the catch-22 we’ve been facing all along. We need fuel to plant more of the crop to give us more fuel but we won’t get any kind of return on that investment for at least four months. We have a longer growing season here than some states, but we’re still looking at a net deficit for several months.”
“What if we could supplement the current fuel supply with petro-diesel,” Joel asked.
Randy just looked at Joel, his expression showing that he knew about the loss of the fuel dump on base.
Joel sighed. “Yes,” he said, “we lost some fuel.” Joel quickly corrected himself when Randy looked like he was going to interrupt.
“Ok,” Joel said, “more than some. The point is that we might be able, probably will be able to replace what we lost, at least this time.”
Randy nodded. He didn’t expect the military to tell him what they had up their sleeves, but it was obvious they had something in the works.
“There’re a couple of farms outside the immediate area that have been abandoned,” Randy said. “A bunch of us have been trying to decide if we need to start cultivating them or not. Looks like we’re gonna make use of them after all.”
“How big,” Joel asked.
“One is about one-hundred-and-twenty acres,” Randy said, “and the other is almost two-hundred. We won’t use it all, though–we can’t. We don’t have the seed stock to plant more than the first farm. Probably closer to a hundred acres or so.”
Randy made a face as he thought about the logistics and did some quick math. “We need about five percent of the seeds from each crop for next year,” he muttered, “but we’re using almost all of the remaining seed stock to plant so let’s call it fifteen percent and give us a buffer.”
“If we can get it in the ground in the next couple of weeks,” Randy said, “we can add another fifty-five-hundred gallons of diesel or so, maybe a little more, but not much.”
“How much of that do we lose back to production,” Joel asked.
“About twenty percent to run the machinery and the plant,” Randy said.
“So a net gain of almost forty-five hundred,” Joel said. “When do you think you can start?”
“I get the feeling that now that I know about it,” Randy said, “I’m late.”
Joel shrugged.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was two-o’-clock in the morning, but Diego was wide awake. He and the crews of the six Black Hawks on this raid had spent the last three days sleeping during the day for just that reason. Adrenaline would only work for so long, and they all needed to be as close to their peak performance as they could be.
Originally, he had wanted to head back to Ft. Stewart, but the Black Hawks just didn’t have the range without their external fuel tanks. The new plan instead called for them to take on Ft. Campbell, whose air-defense capability Ben repeatedly assured them had been disabled before he left. Nevertheless, Diego still kept one cautious eye on the threat indicator as they approached the base from the north.
Each Black Hawk had been topped off with fuel from the other helicopters they’d left behind, which left the remainder literally sitting ducks if Diego’s raid wasn’t able to get back with what they came for. The goal: get as many ERFS, or Extended Range Fuel Systems, as possible–which included four two-hundred-gallon external fuel tanks and, if the opportunity presented itself, one or more fuel trucks of JP-8 aviation fuel.
Before the Colonel’s attack on Fort Campbell, Ben had initially focused on getting as much diesel as possible out of harm’s way, and had only been able to get about half of the fuel trucks off the base before the attack commenced. He’d brought one tanker truck with him, but, again, it was diesel and not JP-8. It was also the truck that Mathis had chosen to blow up.
Ben also hadn’t considered the ERFS to be worth taking since he’d disabled all of the helicopters through various mechanical means, and he didn’t know that Diego had defected to the other side at the time he’d finally had to abandon the base.
Ben had given them the correct transponder code for the base’s Identify Friend or Foe system, in case it had somehow been re-enabled, but the closer they got to the base, the more tense everyone in the cockpit grew.
“Bandit flight,” Diego said over the mission channel, “this is Bandit One. We didn’t get a whole lot of practice on this one, but we take turns dropping off the infantry and then back up to provide cover for the next guy. We should be down over the LZ in less than five minutes.”
They already had maps of the base from the initial raid they’d abandoned, and Ben had provided the detail they needed to pinpoint where the stores of supplies should be and where the fuel trucks ought to be parked. As his mother had been fond of saying while he was growing up, they’d crossed all their Is and dotted all the Ts. No plan ever survived contact with the enemy, though.
They could see lights on the horizon now, which would hopefully help them identify individual buildings. No activity…yet.
“Two minutes to landing zone,” Diego said. He was flying half by instruments and half by sight from the three-quarter moon. He hated night-vision, and avoided it at all costs unless he absolutely had to use it. The eerie, flat green, with no depth perception always freaked him out and it took him a good couple of minutes to get used to normal vision again when he took off the headset.
The threat indicator was still silent; so far, so good.
His co-pilot and navigator started picking out landmarks as they got close enough and calling out directions.
“Bandit flight on me,” Diego radioed. If this went south, it would be his fault and no one else’s.
“Starboard,” the co-pilot said, “thirty degrees.”
The one concession Diego had agreed to was the visor on his helmet. It would allow him to see the infrared laser designator his co-pilot was using to mark buildings so there was no doubt as to which one he was talking about. In this case, a green triangle appeared on a building to his right and he headed in that direction. His co-pilot was even pretty good at keeping the marker centered as he changed course.
Diego could see a number of other Black Hawks on the tarmac now, arrayed in their normal pre-flight parking pattern. There would be plenty of room to set down and unload one at a time, but not more than that. Unfortunately, guards were already trickling out
of the building.
Diego flipped the switch for the external loudspeaker. “Stand Clear,” he said, his voice booming over the pavement. He could see the guards flinch at the volume. “You’re outgunned and probably outnumbered at this point. Nobody needs to die tonight.”
The first guard started to back up a little, but the second stood his ground. “Your funeral,” Diego thought to himself and brought his bird in to hover just over the LZ. Just as he was almost down, the guard who refused to back up brought his rifle to his shoulder.
“Fine,” Diego said, and pulled back on the collective just a touch to raise the nose of the Black Hawk, bathing the guard in prop wash, which knocked him down and caused him to drop his rifle.
A few seconds later and Diego was back in position, the doors were open, and the infantry were out of the hold. A few more seconds and the landing zone was as secure as it was going to get in hostile territory, as the guards were now prisoners.
Diego took off and took the place of Bandit Two. The process was repeated five more times, and sixty heavily-armed members of the Third Infantry Division began looking for things to loot.
…
Helicopters cannot hover in one spot indefinitely. Physics aside, it’s a really bad idea, tactically, to sit in one place for too long when you’re in enemy territory. It was going to take a while for the men to find and move everything they were hoping to take back with them and Diego just couldn’t get the warm fuzzies by sitting still for an hour or more.
The plan was to find and bring back as much aviation fuel as they could, along with as many full sets of external fuel tanks for the Black Hawks as they could find. If all went well, they would be able to outfit all thirty birds when they got back to Promised Land.
Ten minutes after Diego had dropped off his load of troops, he got a call from the Sergeant in charge on the ground.
“They’re finally mounting some resistance,” Sergeant Steve Nichols said. “Only a few shots fired so far, but that’s probably not going to last long.”
“I’m not going to second-guess you, Steve,” Diego said, “but where are they?”
Dark Grid (Book 3): Dark Coup Page 21