by J. L. Salter
“I’m supposed to leave two or three here to guard this exit. And they keep this radio.” Mitch held it up. “Then I take the rest — however many — back to the Community, down the north side, along those trees and bushes.” He pointed even though the hilly terrain obscured their view. “When Force Mitchell gets around behind those trucks without being spotted, then Pete said just turn Gary and Steve loose on them.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Hope those men hurry up. I don’t want to be out here by myself while everybody else is…”
“They probably won’t be too long. Irene called ‘em.” Wade paused. “Oh, us three, my team, we’re the Warriors. Wade’s Warriors. What’s yours?”
Mitch paused. “I hadn’t thought of a name.” Maybe the Lost Sheep?
“Well, when you do, it’s got to start with ‘M’.”
“Why?”
“I seen enough war movies. It’s always the same letter, like Merrill’s Marauders. Hey! That’s a good one!” Wade whapped a meaty hand toward him but didn’t make contact. “Your team is Mitch’s Marauders.”
Mitch started to mention Darby’s Rangers as merely one illustration of non-alliterative unit nicknames, but didn’t. The sound of Mitch’s Marauders was actually quite appealing.
In the golf cart, Joe looked at his watch, no doubt pondering the tag, Wade’s Warriors. It was likely his first time with a catchy team name — task force or otherwise. He probably wished they had their own tee shirts or caps.
Wade started to leave, but stopped. “Mitch, you better keep your eye on Steve.”
“Why?”
“In his prime, he was a lean, mean, fighting Marine.” Wade apparently savored that alliteration for a second. “Now he’s extra mean.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Wade touched the empty seat beside him absent-mindedly and then looked back at Mitch. “You okay?”
“My heart feels like it’s trying to jump from my chest to my stomach.”
Wade grinned. “Aw, you’ll do okay. You got your own task force.” The Wade-mobile began speeding off to the north a few seconds before he called out, “Ready?”
Mitch the solo Marauder stood there holding a lousy radio in one hand and his revolver in the other. He had to keep pulling his finger away from the trigger guard. He watched Wade’s souped-up golf cart careen back north along Winston Court. Because of the hills and curve, it disappeared about four hundred feet away, but Mitch thought he could hear Joe’s arthritis screaming.
For the first time, he examined the radio device closely. Though never before used, it was an older model with a maximum range of about two miles — over flat, level terrain. Not designed for woods, hills, or areas underlain with limestone. Mitch turned the knob. Nothing but static. He rechecked it — still set for channel seven. More static.
Mitch couldn’t see anything but the church, perched right down at the intersection of Winston and Whiskey. Great address for a church house. He’d seen a map earlier. There was a big knob, elevation 1011 feet, between him and the defenders at the barricade. Only eighty-two feet lower than Bogle Knob further north and one hundred twenty feet lower than Wait Knob, to the south. But the prominence blocking Mitch’s view had no name. Right now, Mitch felt like no-name-knob. All alone, can’t see anything.
All he wanted was to be with Kelly. Mitch remembered his morning premonition that Kelly was hurt or in danger. He recalled his flood of relief when he saw her at the Henleys’ — healthy, whole, and happy. Then he’d felt slightly foolish for giving so much credence to the feeling of something bad about to happen.
Waiting was bad enough, but doing so alone was the pits! Waiting had always been Mitch’s weak suit. Hmm. Well, Mitch acknowledged he had quite a few weak suits. In fact, he had an entire closet full of weak suits. Oh well. His introspective analogy was much too moth-eaten.
All he wanted now was to run to Kelly. Take her away from this bizarre Wild West last stand drama and keep them both safe. How on earth did I get involved in this anyway? “I guess there’s no free lunch,” he muttered to himself.
Chapter Thirty
Wednesday at 1:25 p.m.
Barricade
Standing below his flag, close to the near end of the vehicular barricade, Pete watched as Earl hustled that direction with his sprayer in hand. He can’t wait to use his TV toy.
Earl arrived huffing and puffing and, out of habit, patted down his awful toupee. “Pete, I have three hoses hooked up, but still got a problem.”
“Make it quick.”
“I don’t have anything to go in the reservoir.” Earl held it up. “No fertilizer, no weed killer. Nothing to spray but water.”
“If that sapsucker has enough pressure to shoot eighty-five feet like you say, the water alone will discourage those punks.” Pete walked with Earl toward the Caddy.
“But everybody else has a gun or something.” Earl sounded whiny.
“Well, what’s that in that gallon jug?” Pete pointed inside Earl’s trunk.
“That’s my collection, for my veggie garden.”
“Collection of what?” Pete had a suspicion.
Earl lowered his voice a bit. “Well, I guess you could say it’s pee.”
“You mean you really do save urine for the garden? I thought Leo was lying as usual.” Pete noticed Ellie approaching.
“It has potent acidic qualities.”
“Never mind its qualities. Pour some of that potent collection in the reservoir of your super sprayer.” Pete smiled as he nodded. “I think that’ll be a nice surprise for those punks.”
Earl looked very pleased that he also had a lethal weapon. Opening the jug of urine he’d collected over the past week, he sniffed gingerly. It was distinctly rank. “Oooh, this will do just fine.” Then Earl turned to tend to his reservoir.
Ellie cleared her throat softly. “Pete, I never heard about peeing on plants doing them no good.”
“Me neither. But maybe hosing down those gangsters with Earl’s collection might helps us out a little.”
Ellie chuckled. “At least ought to sting their eyes a bit.”
“If it slows them down — any way at all — it’ll be a good weapon.” Pete turned to leave.
“Pete, remind me not to eat any salads that Earl brings anywheres.”
****
Task Force Wade
In the open common area, Wade’s Warriors were already at work.
Wade found a spot behind the hay bales to set up his experimental explosive charges. With the salvaged gunpowder he had five large bombs in heavy plastic detergent bottles of slightly more than three quarts each. When the fuse hit the main powder supply, they would fire wadding — from the neck of the bottle — a short distance into the air, but otherwise just make a lot of smoke and a tremendous bang. Wade’s exhaustive experimentation had finally paid off, he hoped.
Roger peered closely without touching anything. “How do you keep the first explosion from breaking the chain?”
“Did lots of experiments to figure that out. The trick is to have five real long fuses, but different lengths. You light all five at the same time, so the first one don’t affect the others. They all go off at a different times. I been working with three different safety fuses. The green one’s best.”
“You figured out all that?”
“Got the powder burns to prove it.” Wade squinted at him. “Why do you seem so surprised?”
“Oh, nothing. It sounds perfect, actually.” Roger straightened up from his peering. “How far apart are the explosions?”
“I figure the first one goes in about five minutes. Each one ought to be about ten minutes after that.”
“We going to be far enough away?”
“When they explode, it’s just noise and smoke plus a bunch of wadding. But they ain’t packed with nothing and don’t launch no fragments, except a few scraps of them plastic bottles.”
“How do you ignite this much explosive powder without making
a crater out here?”
“Look, Roger, I ain’t come out here to teach farrcracker class. They got at least two types of powder in them big display things. My job was sorting it all out. The ‘flash’ powder’s got something mixed in it — powdered aluminum, I think — which makes all the flash and burns explosive stuff. But the other type’s called ‘salute’ powder and it’s mixed with something else that makes just the sound.”
“So no projectiles.” Roger evidently needed to be certain.
“Nope. Just noise and explosion.”
“‘The sound and the fury, signifying nothing’.”
“The what?”
“Faulkner’s use of a Shakespeare quote, from Macbeth, I think. Never mind, tell you later.” If Roger recalled it was “a tale told by an idiot,” he probably decided not to explain it further. “Give us a heads up when you light that gaggle of fuses.”
“Ten-four.”
****
Barricade
Art was east of Leo’s driveway laying the bogus minefield with Melvin’s newly-enthusiastic help. As he visually measured his mine field Art thought of another ingredient. “Melvin, you think you can rustle me up an old alarm clock? Manual, the wind-up kind.”
Melvin first looked puzzled but then perked up. “Yeah. I got one somewhere.”
“Good. We also need something to anchor these wires to the ground beneath the plates.”
Melvin thought for a second. “How about a ball point pen? The clip ought to hold that wire down.”
“Good idea. You got any?”
“Bunches. They’re free at my bank. I get one every time I go. Be right back.” Melvin looked eastward to see where the gangsters were. He sneaked behind the barricade, along the north front of Earl’s duplex, between Earl’s and his own unit, and then went inside his own back door.
Shortly Melvin emerged, retraced his earlier route, and arrived at the minefield with the clock and over a dozen pens. “That was weird,” he remarked. “I’ve lived here don’t know how many years but my condo felt real different just now.”
“Different, how?”
“Not sure… empty, quiet, maybe spooky. Like I was in somebody else’s house with nobody home.”
“Might be the extra adrenaline.” Art tested the winding key on the borrowed clock. “You know, stressing before the enemy advances.”
Not having served in the military, Melvin just shook his head.
Returning to his preparations Art took a pen, looped the wire through its clip, and jammed the pen into the ground. “Perfect.”
Melvin looked pleased. It obviously felt good to cooperate and actually assist.
Then Art formed two big, visible loops to connect the wire to the next mine. The wire’s gauge was not as thick as he’d hoped for, but he was able to make do. He left an empty hole between each pan-pretending-to-be-a-mine.
“Why’d you have Jenkins dig those extra holes?”
“So it’ll look like we got some of the mines laid but didn’t get finished.” Art rubbed his dirty hands on the back of his pants leg.
Melvin looked puzzled again.
“If it looks too perfect, maybe they get suspicious.” Art winked. “But if it looks like we were in a hurry, they won’t stop to wonder whether these are real mines or not — they’ll be wondering why we didn’t get finished. See?” In case Melvin was skeptical of the logic, Art continued his explanation. “The empty holes are just a feint to distract them from our bluff.”
Melvin understood. “You can get people to accept one big lie by telling them another small lie.”
When Art grinned his goatee adjusted dramatically. The last thing he did was attach a long wire with three large loops from the nearest dummy mine to the alarm clock. The connection was not electrical, just a physical tie-in. Then Art set the alarm and placed the clock gently on the front bumper of Earl’s yellow Caddy.
“What time did you set it for?”
“3:33.”
Melvin checked his own watch. “That’s over two hours from now.”
“If we’re not already dead by then, it’ll remind me to clean up this mess before the Association president bulls his way down here.” Art smiled grimly. “Besides, three is my lucky number.”
While Art and Melvin re-checked all components of their dummy mine field, the largest van moved up about fifty feet until it was in front of the middle of the first duplex which actually faced Placid. The second vehicle turned off North Pleasant and stopped at the house which sided the bottom of Placid. The third truck moved into the approximate position the second one formerly occupied.
The minefield engineers noticed the vehicle movements at about the same time Herb obviously did.
Herb rushed out of Art’s garage without speaking to Art or Melvin and took great care to step around the dummy mine field. Left in his wake was a very faint trail of airborne sawdust. He hurried along the barricade line to find Pete, who’d just then emerged from his condo.
****
Opposing Force
Somehow Foss had briefly taken his mind off the catastrophic miscalculation of time involved in the heist and was able to focus on the other logistical aspects of his grand plan. He stood by the largest van thinking. Got everything covered. My two lookouts will signal if somebody drives up, but also delay them by blocking the road, pretending to be broke down. I’ve studied the maps. There’s only one way in this neighborhood and one way out.
Herve had sent loader H2 up ahead, stealthily, to see what the tall man with the unusual goatee was planting in the same front yard where, earlier, the gray-haired man had dug holes. It was perplexing that two men would plant flowers while — presumably within their partly-obscured view — nineteen out-of-towners were emptying many other duplexes of valuables.
H2 returned, out of breath, and made his report.
Herve hurried over and interrupted Foss’s self-congratulatory thoughts. “Hey man! They got the street blocked up there!”
“What do you mean, blocked?” Foss grabbed him. He always clutched someone when agitated. “You mean like a few sawhorses or something?”
“No, man. I mean blocked!” Herve knocked away that hand and pointed excitedly. “They got cars and trucks and trailers parked sideways across the street, man. Big cars!”
“You’re crazy. Did you see it yourself? Or is this from one of your trained monkeys?”
“I ain’t gone up there looking for no pink slips, man, but my boy knows what a blocked-up street looks like.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” Foss liked the symmetry of threes. “Let’s go take a look.”
Foss and Herve crept up the south side of Placid Lane and nearly reached the unit shared by Gerald and what’s-his-name — second duplex from Pleasant Drive, and three away from the Henleys — before they were able to see the barricade. They stopped and dropped.
“Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!”
“It’s worse than he said it was, man! We can’t drive a kiddie bike through that pile of junk.” Herve sometimes exaggerated.
“Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!”
“The richest people are on that other street, man. They got the newest cars and stuff. We got to break through this roadblock and down to that other street, man.”
“Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!”
“Hey, man.” Herve hadn’t taken his eyes off the barricade. “What we going to do?”
Foss hated it when his plans were thwarted by utility trenches, collapsed culverts, incompetent haulers, and dim-witted secundos. But it truly steamed his shorts to have old folks block the street he needed with huge old cars and trucks. What else could possibly happen? “Blitz! Blitz! Stinkin’ blitz!” Foss did not even know about the problems with out-dated and incorrect maps for that part of town. Or that his two lookouts were focused mainly on their marijuana.
Foss realized he’d have to settle himself enough to keep order among his eighteen cohorts, so he took a few deep breaths. “Okay, no sweat. We can smash through that pile of junk in two s
econds.”
Herve seemed less confident. “What about all them old folks, man?”
“When we start moving their direction, they’ll scatter just as fast as them wheelchairs can roll.”
“I don’t know, man. They look like they’re out there to stay.”
Foss just waggled his pistol.
Herve side-stepped the handgun and looked again toward the barricade. He obviously wondered if the people manning it would even budge.
“Let’s go. Go! Stinkin’ go! We got houses to clear.” Foss put the stop watch in his pocket and snapped the fingers on his free hand.
Herve grabbed two of Dante’s haulers just standing around one of the trucks. D11 and D14, he guessed. “Vamanos!”
****
Barricade
Pete could see Herb the goat man, then stumbling his direction, was agitated and the wise NCO already knew what must have developed.
From Art’s garage Herb had seen the bald white man and the short Latino sneaking up along the south side of the street. He’d stayed hidden in Art’s garage until they made their way back to their largest truck. Though their exact conversation could not be heard from that distance, the leader’s loud cursing indicated he was highly agitated.
Hustling to the open garage where Pete waited in the shade, Herb was so out of breath that he couldn’t speak at first.
When Pete reached out a hand to steady him, a light sprinkling of sawdust fell away. “They’ve seen the barricade, right?”
Herb nodded, still heaving with short, ragged breaths.
“They headed back to the trucks to gather the rest of the hoodlums. Right?”
Herb likely wondered why he’d been the lookout if Pete already knew everything. Finally he could speak a little. “Just now.”
Pete patted his sawdusty shoulder and held it firmly. “Good job, Herb. Go sit and rest a minute.”