by AJ Newman
Gil said, “This going twenty miles in the wrong direction to go get somewhere doesn’t exist in most of the good ole USA.”
Tom said, “Most of the USA doesn’t have the damned mountains to go around to find a pass. There’s miles, and then there’s Oregon miles.”
Gil said, “I hate that saying. The state should have made some tunnels through the mountains or roads over them.”
Tom and Paul laughed. Paul suddenly exclaimed. “There are lights up ahead on the left!”
Tom said, “That should be Fish Lake and Fish Lake Resort. Someone must be squatting there. We’ll be past them before they know what happened.”
The next twenty miles took forty-five minutes, and nothing notable occurred. Tom was pleased they’d made it to the White City area without being shot at. “Gil, lead us to the target.”
Gil sounded off. “Back up! We just passed our turn. Yes, there it is. Brownsboro Meridian Road, now make a quick right on the next road and then left in just a minute.”
A few seconds later, Gil said, “Turn left at the road up ahead. Now, follow it until the end.”
Ten minutes later, they saw a fancy gate, and Gil said, “Stop. I hope this locked gate means no one has been up this way. Now pull up a bit so I can place a chain on the gate and hook it to your tow hooks.”
Tom saw Gil give the signal, and he backed up until the gate broke free. Gil removed the chain, and they drove on up to a massive log home that should have been called a mansion or hunting lodge. It was a two-story structure in the middle with two one-story wings and a six-car garage behind.
Four of the men stood guard duty while Jerry and Alan unloaded the cutting tools. The others searched the home for the vault and anything else useful. They’d searched for a half-hour to no avail when Tom said, “Back up and look at each room and see if something doesn’t add up from the outside of the home to the inside dimensions.”
A few minutes later, Sam called out. “Bingo! It’s over here off the kitchen. I think that cabinet moves to expose a secret door.”
Fifteen minutes later, they hadn’t found the latch. Tom went to the garage and came back with a crowbar. He pried on the side of the cabinet until the wood on the right side broke, and the entire cabinet swung open to reveal a steel door.
Tom asked, “Jerry can you cut through this door?”
Jerry smiled, “Does a wild bear crap in the woods?”
Tom looked at him, just shaking his head. “You’re starting to sound like my Granny B.”
The acetylene torch flared and then steadied down to a bright blue flame as Jerry cut a hole around the doorknob. He finished, and the door still wouldn’t move. An hour later, Jerry had cut the hinges from the door and pried it open. The door fell and almost cut Jerry’s foot off. He did a fancy sidestep and saved his foot.
Tom handed Jerry a flashlight and said, “You opened it, go on in and see what’s there.”
Jerry cautiously looked around the opening for booby traps and then entered the room. “Oh my God. This is an armory!”
Tom and Gil entered the room and saw two long racks with every gun, from antique black powder rifles to modern AK47s and expensive ARs. Along one wall were the owner’s favorite weapons. Tom hefted an MRad .338 rifle, and Gil lifted an M 107A1 .50 BMG sniper rifle.
Gil said, “Damn, this guy had some dough and spent it well. Look over there! He has several M4s and an old SAW. There has to be a shit load of .223 and 5.56 ammo around here somewhere.”
Krista yelled, “I found the ammo!”
She had opened a door that led into another room that was half the size of the gun vault. The walls inside were lined with shelves filled with ammunition. The center of the room held everything needed to reload shells. There were dozens of different kinds of gunpowder in gallon-size metal cans and smaller pint-size cans.
Tom said, “Gil, please hold back any weapon you might need to get us home safely. The rest of you start loading the remainder of this bounty of weapons and ammunition into the grain truck. Place plenty of ammunition in each pickup.”
They finished loading the truck after dawn and backed it and the pickups into the huge garage. Tom couldn’t risk heading home during daylight. He radioed Kate. “Darling, I’m spending the night away.”
She replied, “Good night. I’ll be watching over you in your dreams.”
Tom saw Jerry climbing all over an old civilian Humvee. “Jerry, it’s a bit big to stick in your pocket to take home.”
Jerry laughed. “I’ll have it running in a few minutes. This thing has all modern running gear that’s been hardened against EMP blasts. There’s a matching trailer at the back of the garage. I plan to drive it home loaded with everything you said there wasn’t room for on this trip.”
Tom was pleased with Jerry’s resourcefulness. “Thanks for handling that, and of course, you can do all that. It will be a welcome addition to our fleet of rusty trusty old vehicles.”
Sam and Krista came down one of the hallways with full bags over their shoulders. Sam said, “If you want some happy women, please get some of the crew helping us load these hygiene supplies. Oh, there is some men’s crap also.”
Tom asked several of the team to help Sam and Krista before following them back to the source of their joy. “Holy crap! This was the man’s survival supply room. Are those canned hams?”
Krista answered, “There’s enough food to feed a small army. This man was a prepper and had the quality stuff, not the MRE crap. I hope we can find more stashes like this. There’s a ton of canned meat and veggies along with dried veggies. Granny B and Deidre’s granny will be happy. This will make planning meals so much better until the crops come in this fall.”
Tom had his crew stuff every bit of the food onto the four vehicles. The Humvee’s trailer was loaded two feet above the side rails. They had to tie a tarp over the boxes to keep them from jarring loose. Tom triple-checked all the loads and then took a nap until an hour before having to leave the massive log home and head back to his ranch.
*
Chapter 29
The Ranch
They didn’t hear the plane as it circled high above them. The Aryan pilot and crew had been alerted by their small outpost at the Fish Lake Resort. The pilot’s mission was to determine if the small convoy was part of the Cartel or a large survivor group. The pilot was instructed to destroy the convoy in either case since the spotter had seen mounted machine guns on two trucks.
The plane quickly flew from its original mission of surveilling the Cartel’s operation in the Ashland to the Medford area. It arrived in time to follow the three-truck convoy to a private home in the hills above White City. The pilot reported the house’s position. A scouting platoon was sent to follow the truck back to its origin, so the plane was a homemade gunship that could wipe out this new threat. The aircraft had several openings on the side to allow the four machine guns, RPGs, and hand grenades to be used on their enemies. One machine gun was a .50 Caliber Browning Machine Gun (BMG), two were the old .30 Caliber Browning Machine Guns, and the third was a pair of 5.56 Caliber Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW). The plane wasn’t as potent as the military’s Spector gunship. Still, it could deploy a hail of devastation from the machine guns and grenades.
The plane left after the scout platoon appeared but returned the following day when the scouts reported the enemy preparing to leave the next night.
***
Kate reported no observed dangers after her group checked the roads up and down the route back to the ranch. Tom drove away from the house at midnight and quickly steered back onto Highway 140, heading east. The convoy had been on the road a half-hour when Lucy told Kate there was something in the sky besides their drones.
Kate asked, “What did you see?”
Lucy said, “I had just arrived at the area and hadn’t dropped down from our usual high altitude when a large object flew below me. It blurred the IR vision scope and shook my drone with its backwash.”
Kate ins
tantly called Jackie to get her drones in the air and said, “We have a plane in the area above the guys. Be ready to fight,” and then she called Tom. “Babe, you have company in the sky.”
Tom radioed his men to warn them to look above and in front and behind their vehicles. Krista used her NVG goggles and caught a glimpse of the plane as it flew above them. “Got it. Big two-engine plane like an old DC3. Any orders?”
Tom said, “Let’s hope it goes away. Don’t start a fight.”
Krista called back a few seconds later. “It’s coming in low and fast. I think it’s on a strafing run. Men, get your guns ready.”
Jackie’s drones arrived just as the plane began firing on the trucks below. Flames covered the side of the aircraft as all the machine guns roared to life, trying to end Tom and his team’s lives. The plane had to approach from several hundred feet north to enable the machine guns to target the convoy from the plane’s side. Many of the bullets struck trees and the steep hillside between the plane and the convoy.
Both of Tom’s machine gunners cut loose on the plane as Tom steered his little convoy off the road and into a dense group of trees. The withering fire from the aircraft missed the first two trucks but tore through the last pickup. The bullets from Tom’s machine guns hit the plane and killed two of the crew serving the plane's machine guns, but they were quickly replaced.
The plane circled and started back again on a low-level strafing run. Suddenly, there were several large explosions ahead of the plane. The pilot pulled the aircraft into a right turn and increased altitude. Then another explosion blew the right wing off the plane. It crashed into the forest below in a fireball. Secondary blasts lit up the area and completed the destruction of the old DC3.
Krista called Tom, “We have one dead, and Sam and one of my girls are wounded. We’ve stopped the bleeding on both of them. My truck won’t run. Help us move the ladies, and let’s get the flock outta here.”
Several men moved the body and helped the two wounded women into the cab of Tom’s truck. Others stripped the machine gun and ammunition from the damaged pickup. They were on their way home in ten minutes.
Tom called Jackie. “Take out all the enemy's planes, now!”
Jackie said, “We’re on the way there now before they realize they lost a plane.”
Kate said, “Someone is following you. We’re bombing them now.”
A minute later, Kendra reported. “Three jeeps and a dozen enemies are neutralized.”
Twenty minutes later, Jackie’s four drones arrived over the Aryan’s airport. Jackie coordinated the first bombing run so that the bombs would all hit at the same time. There were only five planes, and four of them were blown to bits, with only four of their more than sixteen bombes expended. The last plane was a large turbojet, and it was still in a hanger being serviced. Jackie dropped two bombs on the roof, and then Greta dropped two bombs through the new large hole in the building’s roof. The last two bombs exploded the plane's fuel tanks, and there was a massive fireball above the airport.
Jackie and Kate had performed surveillance on the Aryan’s headquarters several times. Jackie knew where all their strategic supplies and gun emplacements were located. This enabled her to direct the other drone pilots to bomb their barracks, fuel dump, and most machine gun emplacements with accuracy.
Jackie kept one of the drones above the Aryan compound while Doris flew the large RC controlled plane to the airport. The plane had been set up to drop six two-pound bombs that were covered in screws and nuts. The plane approached the airport at two-hundred feet in the dark and began releasing its payload. The bombs hit the ground and exploded. The shrapnel hit a dozen of the skinheads but only killed one of them. The others were wounded and out of action. The anti-personnel bombs were meant to wound people. They put them out of action and make the enemy use up valuable resources tending to the injured.
Jerry’s innovations had worked several times that day.
***
The Aryans had shot blindly into the air and at ghosts in the woods but never saw the drones. They lost five planes, their fuel dump, their supply warehouse, and sixteen men. There were a dozen more wounded. The Aryan leader surveyed the damage, radioed back to his superior, and demanded more equipment.
The headman Henry asked, “Was this the Mexican Cartel?”
Henry said, “I don’t know. This group drove west to a private home to fetch something and left, heading east. That doesn’t fit Mendoza’s group. This group has some kind of small air force, and shoulder fired ground to air missiles. They bombed the shit out of us, and we never heard their planes.”
The leader said, “They caught you with your pants down.”
Henry gritted his teeth. “I’ll make them pay for killing my son. I’ll save their leader for a special hell on earth.”
***
The rest of the trip back to the ranch was uneventful, and they arrived just before the sun rose. Several men carried the wounded down into the bunker to receive medical care. The others unloaded most of the weapons and ammunition and took them into the bunker. The rest was taken to the cave.
Sam’s injury wasn’t that serious. The bullet had to penetrate the truck’s sheet metal, window regulator, and another layer of sheet metal before hitting her hip. She lay in her bed at the bunker while Cliff tended to her needs. Kate and Tom came into her room to check on her.
Kate asked, “I see you were shot in your assets.”
Sam laughed. “I have to lie on my side for a while but, it was actually more on my side. I was lucky. The next bullet killed the woman behind me.”
Tom smiled as he watched Cliff dote on Sam. “I guess it’s too much to ask for help from your government buddies.”
Sam said, “They have their hands full all across the country. They’re pulling out of the least populated areas to use the manpower to do the most good. I’m glad you stopped by. I just got off my satellite phone with my boss. He says they intercepted a call from the local Aryan skinhead asshole to the head skinhead asshole over the whole northern USA. The man whose planes we bombed asked for and will receive twice as many troops and some military aircraft including a couple of attack helicopters.”
Tom said, “Poop. We’re in deep poop if they use those against us.”
Sam replied, “Apparently, the skinheads want to move their headquarters to northern California, and this is ground zero for their push south. We’re bugs about to hit their window of racism and perversion.”
Tom said, “Sam, tell your boss we need a few Stinger missiles or something to bring down those helicopters.”
Sam replied, “I’ll do it, but he’s still gathering about half of our last request. He did promise the drone batteries, C4, and .556 ammo.”
“Well, that’s better than I hoped.”
Tom and Kate left Sam and Cliff to go find Granny B, Jackie, and Rick. They ran into Jerry and Gil, who were talking about building better weapons. Tom overheard them. “Jerry, how did the drones blow a large plane out of the sky?”
Jerry chuckled. “Lots of luck and a bit of ingenuity. I devised two different bombs meant to take out aircraft. The first one has the drone operator dropping the bomb in front of a plane. Then a signal is sent to detonate the bomb just when the plane got close to the bomb. Those were near misses. I think adding a parachute to slow them down might make them easier to explode close to the target.”
Jerry smiled and leaned back in his chair. “The second type had several small diameter cables spooled up with the bomb that paid out once dropped. On the end of the cables was a one-pound weight. The lines were about a hundred feet long. The idea was for the plane to hit the cable and trap the bomb against the plane. That was the one that blew the plane to bits. I’m trying to work with Gil to perfect both of them or make a new, more effective ‘air mine.’”
Tom frowned. He knew they’d be no match for an attack helicopter. “You need to begin thinking about taking out an Apache or other type attack helicopter. Two are hea
ding this way, soon.”
Gil and Jerry both said, “Crap,” and then Gil added, “We need some air to ground missiles. Even some RPGs used at relatively close range would be better than what we have now.”
***
Tom, Kate, Jackie, and Rick sat around the dining hall table drinking whiskey after the day was done. They were busy rehashing the day’s events when Granny B walked up with a bottle of Blanton Bourbon and sat down with them. She poured each of them three fingers of bourbon and said, “Here’s to surviving and those who gave their all so we could survive.”
Kate asked, “Why in God’s name do we have to fight each other?”
Granny B replied, “Men and women have been fighting other men and women for land, oil, and the best spot to fish since before men and women walked erect. We haven’t bothered anyone that didn’t bother us first, and yet Mendoza and the damned skinheads want to kill or capture us.”
Tom said, “You might as well ask why a dog chases its tail. I get it that anyone has the right to defend themselves, but why on earth do people fight for land when that’s what we have plenty of for everyone?”
Rick calmly said, “It’s all about power and control and always has been. Not to mention they would rather take from others than do the hard work of building and growing themselves.”
*
Chapter 30
The Ranch
The plane came in low, and the pilot saw the three lights in the open field ahead. The crew shoved the cargo to the open rear door and waited on the green light. The light turned green, and the three pallets of supplies soared out into the air. The parachutes deployed, and the pallets fell to the ground. Only the last one missed the open field but landed safely on top of several bushes.