“Want to come in and meet Lenny?” Dave asked of Sal.
“How long you gonna be in here?”
“Not long. Five minutes maybe.”
“Hell, that’s not worth all the work it takes for me to climb down and then climb back up again. I’ll just wait out here.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll make it quick.”
Beth said, “I wanna come, Daddy.”
She scrambled off the mattress in the bed of the truck before Dave could utter a word, essentially making the decision for him.
She took his hand and walked up the steps of the office.
A five-pointed star adorned the tinted glass window of a building that had to be a hundred years old if it was a day.
The words “Pasco County” shouted out from a semi-circle on the upper part of the star.
The words “Sheriff’s Office” filled the bottom of the star.
In the star’s center was the county seal, a black bear sitting on his haunches and displaying his claws menacingly with the county emblem behind him.
It piqued Dave’s curiosity.
The pair walked into the office and found Lenny in the same place Dave found him the first time. Sitting at his desk with his feet propped up and his hands folded across his midsection.
“Hello, Lenny. I’m Dave Spear. Remember me?”
The old man put his feet down and leaned forward.
“I don’t know. Come closer so I can see you.”
Dave and Beth walked to the desk.
When they were about ten feet away, Lenny chuckled and said, “Sniper rifle, right?”
“That’s right.”
Lenny looked right at Beth and said, “Seems like you were a bit taller and had less hair last time.”
Beth laughed, pointed at her dad and said, “Not me. Him!”
“Oh. You weren’t the one I gave the sniper rifle to?”
“No!”
He stood up and reached out for Dave’s hand.
“I always wondered if you survived your one-man war. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
“The sniper rifle helped me more than you’ll ever know. It helped me even the odds before I went in to do close quarter battle with them.”
“Good. I’m glad things worked out. Did you come to bring the rifle back?”
“It’s in our rig under the mattress. If it’s okay with you though, I’d like to keep it a couple more days. Just in case I need it again.”
“I reckon that’s okay, seeing nobody’s asked for it since I loaned it to you.”
Chapter 43
A concerned look came over Lenny’s face.
“You sound like your troubles aren’t over yet. Anything I can do to help?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’ve learned lately not to take anything for granted.
“Before I head back to the Dykes brothers place and walk headlong into an ambush I wanted to get some intel.”
“Well, I haven’t heard of any activity over there. Of course that’s an isolated part of the county, and it’s always been pretty quiet.
“The Dykes have always been a close-knit family that liked to keep to themselves and solve their own problems. Not the type to come and tell us if they were having issues with somebody.
“Pasco County’s full of folks like that. The Dykes are good men, all of them. If they had to kill any marauders they’d probably let me know out of courtesy.
“But they wouldn’t ask for help.
“Also, the bad guys don’t often come and tell me when they plan to take over a place. Call me crazy, but I consider that downright less than neighborly of them.”
Dave smiled.
“I agree.
“Okay. I’ll take that as a good sign, that the Dykes didn’t come to you saying there was any suspicious activity going on over there.
“I’ll still be careful, because my ambush alert is going off on me. But maybe this time it’s a false alarm.
“Hey, can I ask you something else, though?”
“I reckon so. What is it?”
“Your county seal. I saw it on the big badge out front.”
“What about it?”
“I was poking around in the woods when I was here the first time, and never thought to look for bears. Are they pretty common in these parts?”
Lenny laughed.
“The last time we had a bear sighting in Pasco County was back in the seventies. Turned out to be a bear cub that escaped from a circus train parked on the railhead overnight.”
“Well that’s nice to know. Seems kind of odd to have a bear on your seal if you don’t have any bears in your county.”
“Oh, it wasn’t always this way. We once had a lot of them. But this county’s two hundred years old now. They’ve all been cleaned out.
“Now the only varmints we have are raccoons and escaped convicts.”
Dave held out his hand to say goodbye and said, “If I don’t encounter any more trouble I’ll bring you back your sniper rifle in a day or two.”
“Sounds good to me. Good luck to you, Dave.”
“Thank you, sir.”
With that he took his daughter’s little hand and headed out the door.
“Dad,” she asked as they walked, “What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing, Peanut. I’m not afraid of anything. Your mother tells me that’s a sign of how stupid I am.”
Beth giggled.
“I remember her saying that.”
“Now, even though I’m not afraid of anything I worry about a lot of things. Is that what you meant?”
“Yes. That’s what I meant. What are you worried about?”
“I worry that the situation might have changed since we left.
“You see, I didn’t get a chance to know the Dykes brothers well enough to trust them.
“Your Aunt Karen said they were decent men, and we took her word for it.
“But I’ve seen how this new world can change men.
“I suppose that’s the thing that worries me the most. That the Dykes brothers weren’t as kindly as I thought they were. And that once I left to go and search for you their true nature came out.
“And that maybe they’re not treating your mother and sister and Aunt Karen as well as they should be.
“And there are other things I worry about as well.
“Things like an epidemic of flu coming through and making them sick.
“When I was traveling I heard stories of a flu that went through Houston and killed a lot of people. I heard stories of the same thing happening in Oklahoma City, and of something else that killed a lot of people in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“They thought that one might have been chicken pox, but weren’t even sure because it didn’t behave like they thought it would.”
“I remember you used to make Lindsey and me get flu shots every year.”
“That’s just the thing, honey. Flu shots don’t exist anymore. If you get it you get it and there isn’t much medication to treat it anymore either.”
“Anything else you worry about?”
“I worry that more bad men might have come through and tried to take over the bunker.
“Or that some of the canned food they had in the bunker became tainted and made everyone sick.
“Or that one of them went mad with cabin fever and got violent.”
“What’s cabin fever?”
“It’s when you spend so much time being indoors it drives you a bit mad. Kind of like when someone who is claustrophobic loses it and has to get into a more open place.”
“Oh, I know about that one, on account of Jonas Moseley, he was in my third grade class.
“He was claustrophobic. The teacher had to put him on the row next to the windows, and there was no desk in front of him or behind him or next to him.
“When we went up to him on the playground we had to go one or two at a time.
“He was a cool guy and all, but when there were too many people around him he got nervou
s and said he felt closed in.”
“Well, when we get close to the bunker I’m gonna leave you and Sal with the rig and I’m going to go ahead and check the place out.
“Just to make sure it’s safe to go in.”
Chapter 44
Dave laughed at his own stupidity as they rolled down the narrow road leading to the Dykes brothers’ bunker and to Karen’s farm not far beyond it.
He was marveling at how everything looked exactly the same way he left it.
Then he caught himself.
Of course it looked the same.
For although it seemed forever since he’d left, in reality it was just a few weeks.
Time marched slowly on, but no seasons had changed.
Actually, in the grand scheme of things and despite how it felt, he hadn’t been gone that long at all.
He was starting to recognize individual landmarks.
Like the white picket fence along another farm’s property.
The four boulders someone had placed, with great effort, on each corner of an intersection with another farm road.
Someone, probably the same person, had taken a can of white paint and brush painted names and arrows upon each rock.
“Swenson,” said one, and pointed west.
“Jones,” said another
The one which said “Alexander Farm” also included a second sign. “Ely” pointed back in the direction they’d come from.
In the days of GPS and telephones which gave one verbal instructions on which way to turn, such painted directions were of no use.
But someone painted them there anyway.
The days of electronic navigating were gone, maybe forever.
So maybe the painter of the rocks was a visionary.
Perhaps he somehow knew his creation would be of some value, at some time in the future.
Perhaps whoever it was, if he had somehow managed to survive, was now saying, “I told you so” to his naysayers.
In any event the fourth boulder, the one which said “Dykes” with an arrow that pointed to the east, told Dave they were on the right route.
And that they were almost there.
Dave, of course, remembered the boulders from his original journey.
They served as a landmark when he’d first discovered Karen’s farm had been overrun; had helped him find his way back after he’d borrowed the sniper rifle from Lenny.
Dave had an excellent memory.
It seldom failed him.
He knew that three hundred yards up the road, in the forest on the north side of the roadway, was a very large clearing.
And that inside that clearing was a fortified concrete pillbox, sitting atop a buried bunker.
The Dykes bunker.
He pulled the reins hard and brought Cody and Shiloh to a quick halt.
He climbed down from the wagoneer’s seat. Sal knew instinctively what was up.
Beth needed an explanation.
“Daddy, where are you going?”
“Honey, we’re almost there. Remember I told you that before we just showed up there I was going to make sure it was safe?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, that’s where I’m going. I’ll be back in half an hour, maybe a bit longer.
“I need for you to stay here with Sal. You can sing him those songs you made up while we were fishing, remember?”
“Be careful, Daddy.”
“I will, Peanut. I promise.”
Dave went to the bed of the truck and lifted up the mattress.
He took out his AR-15 and two extra magazines, as well as his Bushnell binoculars.
He went back to Sal and said, “If you hear any gunshots turn this thing around and head back to Ely. That won’t be a good thing.”
Sal nodded.
Without another word Dave was off like a shot and disappeared into the woods on the south side of the roadway.
Dave’s “trouble” radar, his gut feeling, had been going off for the past several days.
He felt the same way he’d felt a couple of times when on patrol around Fallujah. The eerie feeling his team was being watched, or at least anticipated. And that there were insurgents out there waiting to spring a trap on them.
His first indication his instincts were right was the sense something had changed in the forest.
It was no longer in the pristine condition it was in when he was here before.
He came across boot prints.
Three… no, four… different tread marks.
They were old, but he couldn’t envision a scenario in which four men might be working their way through these woods that didn’t mean trouble.
A little farther up, a burned out campfire, at least a month old.
Then, finally, his suspicions were confirmed.
He came across the body of a man, now rotted away to bones and scattered.
One complete arm was missing, probably torn away and dragged off by a coyote or fox.
Most of the bones in his left foot were also gone, meaning some animal had chewed off half the foot and had himself a tasty dinner.
The skull was intact, but the breastbone was shattered by gunfire.
Nobody goes into the woods anymore without both a pistol and a long gun and this man had neither.
He had not fallen dead from a heart attack while hunting.
He was shot dead, and not by accident either.
If he’d been shot by accident his body would have been recovered. He’d have been buried, or at least burned.
The fact he was left face down, his weapons taken, was an indication he’d died by hostile fire.
And that made Dave’s situation a lot worse than it was just a few minutes before.
Chapter 45
He slowly worked his way through the forest until he could see, through heavy shrubbery, the clearing which sat atop the Dykes’ buried bunker.
Even at first glance he could see some things were different.
The first thing which caught his eye was the most evident, and one only a blind man would miss.
A bright yellow Caterpillar bulldozer sitting in the middle of the clearing.
“Where in hell did that come from?” Dave said under his breath.
The only thing within earshot was a chipmunk, munching on a pine cone twenty yards away.
The tiny creature stopped chewing long enough to look around, and perhaps to ponder Dave’s question.
But he apparently didn’t know the answer, for he said nothing.
He looked over at the big dumb human and determined he could answer his own questions, solve his own problems.
He abandoned the pine cone and scampered off into the forest as Dave focused the binoculars on the pillbox.
The grass had grown up around it. Dave wondered why the brothers had neglected in mowing it, since a clear line of vision looking out from the bunker was kind of important.
Then he remembered asking a question, just before he left: how in the world does one mow the grass on an active mine field?
One of the brothers… he couldn’t remember which one, reminded him they were farmers by trade and therefore had plenty of herbicide at their farm not far away.
It was just a matter of blowing herbicide through a high pressure hose every two or three months during the green season, he’d said.
“Piece of cake.”
Well. Dave wondered, if it was such a piece of cake how come they hadn’t done it since he left?
The grass was now almost a foot high in places.
High enough for someone to combat crawl close to the bunker.
Of course, such a person would almost certainly trip an anti-personnel mine and blow himself to bits.
But he still shouldn’t be invited in.
Then he saw something which quite literally made his skin crawl.
The bunker had been painted olive drab green to help it blend into the scenery and lower its profile.
But one corner of it was no longer gr
een.
He could see exposed and twisted rebar and the gray natural color of bare concrete.
One corner of the pillbox had been heavily damaged.
But by what?
An explosion?
No.
He swept the binoculars to the right again and examined the bulldozer.
Could it have done the damage?
If it had, how was someone able to just drive it through a mine field without getting blown up or shot?
He tried to remember what the brothers had said about the mines they buried.
Were they anti-tank mines or anti-personnel?
Each would have their own settings. Each would require a certain amount of weight to be applied in order to detonate.
The anti-tank or anti-vehicle mines would pack a bigger punch, of course.
But were they needed?
Who in hell would expect somebody to attack the bunker with a bulldozer?
No, they were most likely anti-personnel mines. Someone crawling up to infiltrate the bunker was a much likelier scenario.
And if that was the case… if the mine field was planted with anti-personnel mines, they’d have a much smaller explosive charge and would do little or no damage to a beast like the Caterpillar.
He looked through the high-powered binoculars at the front of the dozer.
There were several pock marks on the super-hardened blade.
Bullet strikes, perhaps?
Maybe from somebody within the bunker, trying to defend against an incoming attack?
As if all this weren’t enough, there was something else, too.
Something he thought he was missing.
Then it dawned on him.
He’d been surveying the site for almost fifteen minutes now, and he hadn’t seen a single sign of life in the bunker.
There were no shadows moving about, visible through the firing ports.
No one looking out of them.
Yet the brothers, when he inquired about the effectiveness of their security procedures, assured Dave the pillbox was monitored twenty four hours a day.
His eyes went back to the pillbox, where he closely scanned each firing port.
His heart was racing wildly, but he forced himself to relax.
And to be patient.
Going off half cocked, assuming there was nobody in the pillbox, would be a bad thing if he was wrong.
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