“What do you mean by that?”
“I guess what I mean is, if I’m going to provide you and your friends with transport and a security detail to go along with it, eventually I’m going to need those things back. Meaning I may plan on dropping by for a visit every so often.”
Lauren squinted, her lips parting. “What?”
Dave folded his arms and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m going to send you home with a force substantial enough to ward off problems. And believe you me, Janey, the Allegheny Highlands and surrounding valleys are practically replete with problems. I’ll send two, maybe three squads of men along—well-qualified men—and a few armored transport vehicles in a convoy. They’ll be under orders to remain there with you, and the rest of the unit will rendezvous with them at a later date. At that point, we’ll put our heads together and come up with a plan. Something that works out for all of us for the future. As uncertain as it is, I don’t need, nor do I desire, any more uncertainties.”
Lauren felt her heartbeat flutter. She put her hand on her chest to assess. “Do you mean that? Are you serious right now?”
Dave swallowed hard, pursing his lips. “Yeah, I believe I am.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m going to send Neo. That’ll guarantee we’ll be able to maintain comms between your valley and the rest of us, no matter where we go. He’ll have a squad with him, but those guys aren’t the best at grunt work, so Richie’s going too. He’s got a team of advanced light infantryman who are well trained and adept at guaranteeing safe passage.”
Excited as she was, Lauren sighed loudly. “Richie? Look, I’m not trying to sound unappreciative, Dave, but does it really have to be him?”
Dave squinted at her. “I know Richie’s a pain in the ass…trust me, I’ve worked with him for years. But one thing’s for certain, in a firefight, he is an absolute menace to the enemy, a force to be reckoned with. Kinda like you.”
“Fine. I don’t exactly treasure the comparison, but you’re right about him being a menace. I guess I’ll find a way to deal with him somehow.” Lauren smiled slightly. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“You’re welcome. Dividing my team up puts me at a disadvantage. But I can’t leave you hanging after everything you’ve told me today.” He paused. “For now though, I gotta make myself scarce for a while to get some shit done. You and your friends are welcome to move about freely. The men know who you are now, so make yourselves at home as best you can until it’s time to move.”
“Can you answer a question for me before you go?”
“That depends on the question.”
“Earlier on, you hinted at something…I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since you said it.”
Dave turned on his heels, adjusted his rifle’s sling, and spit into the dirt. “I have a feeling I might know what you’re getting at…but, shoot.”
“The children,” Lauren said, “where are they?”
The former Green Beret hesitated. “They’re keeping them in separate camps.”
“Why?”
The slits in Dave’s eyes opened wide enough that Lauren could see his stone-cold gray irises yards away. “It doesn’t matter why. They’re children, Janey. One of our most prized commodities, though you’d never know it by the way they were mistreated, molded, brainwashed, and practically thrown to the wolves by the state over the years. Let’s just say not much has changed.”
Lauren looked away, her expression contorting. “Indoctrination…” she whispered, trailing off.
“What was that?”
“Just something Dad used to say all the time.” She hesitated. “I don’t like the thoughts that are swirling in my head right now, Dave. Not in the least.”
“All things being equal, I’m far from getting the warm and fuzzies, too.” He paused. “Edmund Burke was right. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Well, the men you see here playing slap-ass are just that. Good men—handpicked by yours truly. And no one is standing around idle while evil runs rampant through these hills. We’re doing something about it.” He adjusted his rifle again and placed his weight on his right heel. “It’s kinda funny, you know…we always knew a day would come where a war would be fought here, but the face of our intended enemy sure has changed. As it stands, Zero Dark Armageddon has been placed on semipermanent standby. There’s more precious items requiring our direct attention.”
Dave turned and started away. “Our enemy may have changed, but the rules haven’t. There are no rules of engagement for any war fought on American soil. I don’t care who the enemy is. If their intentions are evil, tyrannical, or malicious in any way, as God as my witness, we will put them down once and for all, or die trying.”
Lauren watched the venerable former Special Forces soldier march away, his shoulders squared and his posture formidable, same as it had been on the day she had first met him.
No rules of engagement, she thought. After what she had witnessed and personally experienced, it was a notion Lauren could not disagree with.
“We’ll pop smoke sometime tomorrow morning, so if you need anything in the interim, don’t hesitate to ask,” Dave hollered back. “Within reason, of course, don’t let your mind wander too far.”
“How do I find you in a sea of other black uniforms? And why black, by the way?”
Dave stopped and quarter-turned. “Because good guys wear black.” He pulled his collar down, exposing a throat mic identical to the one Lauren had seen Woo Tang wearing on his neck. “Just grab somebody wearing one of these and tell him or her to holler for me on the radio. I usually answer after the third or fourth time. Usually.”
As Dave walked on, Lauren began to recount their whole conversation. “Radios,” she said under her breath. “How ironic.” She shook her head and leaned against the truck’s tailgate. “For a man who detested them as much as you, Dave.”
Lauren sat there for a moment, running her spoon through what remained of the beef stroganoff she hadn’t yet finished, noticing that it had abated from hot to lukewarm. After a moment, a thought occurred to her.
Radios. Dave hated them, said never to rely on them, and preferred training without them while leaning on alternative means of communication.
Neo was here. And Dave was now sending him to the valley with them.
Dad.
“Oh, shit,” she said, her brow furrowing. “Dad’s radios. Dammit, I totally forgot…”
There had been a reason Alan Russell had packed away a spare set of ham radios inside an EMP-resistant container, and there had been a reason Lauren was the only other person who knew the combination to the lock securing it. It had occurred to her the day she had opened it, but she hadn’t given it so much as a thought since that day.
Had their purpose been specifically for her father to make contact with her and her family? She had no way of knowing—they could have just as easily been for his own use had he made it home. But what if it had been the other way around? What if he had specifically placed the devices there, believing that Lauren would figure them out and assemble a station so that he could communicate with his family?
And what if he had been trying to contact them—this whole time?
“Oh Jesus,” Lauren whispered to herself as her stomach turned. She recalled the titles of the chapters she had skimmed through in the black three-ring binder accompanying the radios. Solar power. Antennas and direction finding. Propagation. What was propagation? Had there been enough information in the notebook to put together an operable radio station?
Lauren tried desperately not to dwell on the past and the things she had failed to follow up on, but she couldn’t help but wonder.
Then she remembered what Dave had said to her only moments before.
There’s always a reason for the way everything goes down.
By some means, a perilous situation had concluded with a fortunate ending. Lauren and the others would be returning ho
me soon, bringing along with them what they had left the valley in search of.
And now Dave Graham’s RTO, his number one communications expert, was coming along with them. And there was a reason for that too.
Lauren needed to find him.
Chapter 12
Allegany County, Maryland
Saturday, December 4th. Present day
RTO Theodore Parsons, better known by his chosen moniker ‘Neo’ to those closest to him, had been one of the original cast members inducted into Dave Graham’s unit. Of those usual suspects, he had also been the most challenging for Lauren to get to know, due to a characteristic incapacity to socialize or carry on typical, everyday conversations. Although no positive confirmation had ever been provided to her concerning his behavioral irregularities, it had been rumored that Neo was autistic, and if Lauren were to wager a guess, she would presume he fell somewhere in the higher functioning portion of the known autism spectrum.
Although plagued by repetitive mannerisms and lacking the common skills that came natural to most, Neo possessed a finely honed set of unique strengths all his own and an aptitude considered by many of his fellow servicemen to be extraordinary. While most sufferers of autism were typically affected with communicative difficulties, both verbal and nonverbal, so long as some type of radio equipment was involved, Neo remained unaffected, and his skills and knowledge had earned him a permanent and well-respected slot within the ranks.
Lauren had spent the better part of an hour exploring the grounds, but it hadn’t taken her long to find where Neo had set up his temporary communications outpost. All she had to do was look for the masts, angled guy ropes, and wire antennas she had seen him erect many times before during extended field training exercises at Point Blank Range.
Neo was seated atop a five-gallon bucket in front of a folding table with several metal cases appearing to be radio equipment sitting atop it. Each case was either black or green in color and had a profusion of switches, knobs, and glowing meters on the front, along with an accompaniment of assorted wires hanging from the rear. One of Neo’s hands was busily spinning a large knob while the other was gripping a microphone.
Spotting the headphones covering his ears, Lauren decided that orally beckoning for him was out of the question. She decided to move in closer and try to steal his attention with visual cues.
Once she got within ten feet of Neo’s table, he peeked up at her and abruptly snapped his fingers, pointing to the rope supports and guylines being used to hold his antenna masts upright. “Don’t trip over those. It took me forever to get them up.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Lauren replied. She started to say something else, but noticed that Neo was paying her no mind.
“I can’t talk right now,” he said, his voice rattling off at a high rate of speed. “I’m checked in to a net.” He glanced up at her awkwardly before turning away and resuming his activities.
“Will you be done soon? I really need to talk—”
Neo waved her off midsentence.
“Okay, I suppose I’ll just stand here and wait until you’re done…with whatever you’re doing.” Lauren drew closer, watching Neo’s eyes glance up at her with scrutiny and dart away with every step she took. Finally, she got within reach of the table and took a knee beside him. She waited, watching him work the radios and occasionally utter something into the microphone she didn’t understand.
Several minutes later, Neo keyed the mic and said, “Roger that, net. This is foxtrot-alpha-nineteen going secure. Foxtrot-alpha-nineteen out.” Neo slid the headphones just above his right ear and adjusted the volume on a different radio set to his far left. After fidgeting with a few other knobs, he eventually looked Lauren’s way and gave her a crooked smile. His pupils shifted horizontally behind the thick lenses of his eyeglasses. “LT said you were here. But I didn’t believe him.” He pushed the frames of his glasses over the bridge of his nose. “Long time no see.”
Lauren grinned. “It’s good to see you. I see you’re still doing your thing.”
“My thing?”
Lauren pointed to the radio equipment, and Neo’s attention shifted to her finger. “Yeah…your thing.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Smiling, she looked beyond to Neo’s antenna array. “I sometimes wish I understood more about this stuff. I still have no idea what I’m looking at.”
Neo continued to fidget with his radios. “That’s funny. I never knew you were interested.”
“I agree, it is funny,” Lauren said. “Because I never knew I was either.” She pointed to a device Neo was tapping on with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. “Is that a Morse code key? I think my dad used to have a few of them.”
“Actually, it’s an iambic keyer, sometimes called a two-lever paddle. I used to use a straight key, but I can send faster with these. One paddle sends dits and the other sends dahs.” Neo turned to her momentarily. “Your dad’s a ham, right?”
Lauren nodded a yes. “I’m surprised you remember that.”
“My mind was built to remember things. Did he teach you the code?”
“He introduced me to it, but I learned it myself. Granted, there’s no way I could read it as fast as you’re sending it right now, but I know it well enough to know it.”
“It takes lots of practice.”
Lauren smiled at him. “I bet it does. But it takes even more practice to carry on two conversations at the same time.”
Neo let a grin slip out, and a hint of color filled his cheeks. “It’s good you know the code,” he said. “We sometimes use it to supplement hand signals and other unspoken comms.”
Lauren raised a brow. “I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.”
“You do that. And I’ll make sure the unit knows you’re proficient.” Neo scratched an ear. “You know…maybe someday, if there’s time, I can teach you more about radios. It’s not that hard, really. Just simple math, electricity, and basic electronics. Beyond that, it helps to know how the sun affects the atmosphere and propagation. Then you have other things like reflection, diffraction, refraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering…but it’s not complicated.” He eyeballed her from the corner of his eye, then looked away.
“Okay…one of the words you just said…propagation. I used to hear my dad say it all the time. What does it mean?”
Neo turned to Lauren, his face lighting up upon hearing her interest. “You really want to know?”
Lauren nodded her head.
Neo spoke with gusto. “Propagation is just a fancy word for travel,” he began. “The way a radio wave travels varies depending on its size or frequency. Radio waves in the VHF range—which are anywhere from around ten to a hundred meters in length, mostly travel by line of sight. Radio waves in the HF range are much, much longer and utilize environmental factors such as ionospheric refraction to propagate from one location to the other. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wave, and the more directional and the more line of sight the propagation characteristics become. The lower the frequency, the longer the wave is, and the more dependent propagation becomes on environmental and atmospheric conditions. And lower frequencies tend to travel greater distances.” He paused. “There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the basic premise. Have I lost you yet?”
“Kind of,” Lauren said, grinning.
“Want me to start over?”
“No, that’s okay. It’s a lot to digest, but I think I understand. My dad used to tell me about his walkie-talkies and how he used to talk to other people for hundreds of miles when he was on top of a mountain.”
Neo nodded with exuberance. “Right. It’s called hill-topping…it’s like a cheat mode. It extends your overall line of sight. That’s why VHF, UHF, and microwave radio transmitters are placed on mountaintops. Depending on elevation, it can extend their range for hundreds of miles, even with low-power transmitters. But you don’t need elevation or strategies like hill-topping when you’re using HF.”
; “HF?”
“It’s the abbreviation for high frequency…the term used for frequencies under thirty megahertz and down to around three thousand kilohertz.” Neo peered at Lauren clumsily, unaware of the proper way to look at her. “Did you stop by for a quick primer on radios? We’ll be departing soon to take you home, and it’s going to take me at least twenty-one or twenty-two minutes to dismantle the station and pack up all this gear.”
“No, I didn’t come here for a lesson, but I would love to learn more, though. Maybe someday you can show me when we have more time.”
Neo nodded awkwardly and stood. “Maybe.”
Lauren hesitated, watching him fret over dismantling his station. “Neo? I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Like what?”
“Something that’s right up your alley. I wanted to see if you could look into it for me when you get back to the valley.”
Now in the process of unplugging and rolling up cables, Neo stopped in his tracks. He peeked Lauren’s way, but only for a second. “You’re not going with us?”
Lauren understood that Neo was just as analytical as she was. There was no point in her hiding anything from him. “No, I’m not. I’ve decided to stay. And, oddly enough, you’re the first one I’ve told.”
Neo nodded and resumed his activities. He opened the five-gallon bucket he’d been using as a stool and began to stow rolled-up cables inside it. “LT told you about the kids, didn’t he?”
Lauren hesitated, watching Neo closely. “Yeah. He did.”
The look on Neo’s face was indiscernible, as if a thought occurred to him and had taken him to a place he didn’t want to be. He stopped all activity and stood dormant, a resigned look befalling him. “Did he tell you what those people are doing to them?”
“He said they were being kept separate in other camps, but he didn’t elaborate much beyond tha—”
“I remember when my dad used to hit me,” Neo blurted out, almost angrily. He squinted his eyes and forced his words through clenched teeth. “He used to ask me…questions. Tough questions. Inane questions. And when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he would hit me—sometimes with his hands, sometimes with other things. He didn’t understand my…impediment.” Neo studied Lauren fleetingly. “It’s not that I didn’t want to answer him…it was because I couldn’t. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, but I am a trifle socially and emotionally inept. Far from what most people consider normal.”
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