Wear Something Red

by K.G. Lawrence

  Chapter 43

  Forbidding her from going to the Harding farm made it easier for her to hook up with Lily and Donny. She didn’t have to make some excuse to Craig and Saleha for skipping out of work. And if she found something mom could use, that would make the apology she was going to have to make to her go a bit smoother. The issue of her kleptizing things, well, they’d have a long talk about that.

  The rendezvous was at the gate to the service road. Lily was there when she arrived. She wore a pink sweatshirt that displayed an angry girl in a black Ninja outfit wielding nunchuks and the warning GRR-L POW-R printed below in yellow-lightning letters. A tablet hung down from the girl’s belt.

  “I just called him,” Lily said. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. They took his mom.”

  “Who took her, Colter?”

  “He thinks it was the FBI. They just showed up in two black SUVs yesterday and took her away.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and looked at the gravel road. “Shouldn’t we go back to where we were the last time?”

  “Saleha told me this road goes up into an area of the hills that will give us a better view of Colter’s farm.”

  “I found out who the other hacker is.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone where you work.”

  “Zemar, it has to be Zemar. He knows computers.”

  “I sent him a cyber-decoder ring.” Lily whispered, “Shana, I think Colter is a very bad man.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “If he catches us, we could get seriously hurt, like, dead hurt.”

  Donny came over the hill on his bike.

  Two weeks ago, she and mom had raced along this road carefree and oblivious. She’d sworn off stealing. Now, mom was forbidding her from going to the Harding farm but wouldn’t tell her why. She had betrayed mom’s trust by stealing a stupid wallet. Lily had just told her their lives could be in danger if Colter caught them spying on him. Her stomach, heart and knees all seemed to wobble at the same time.

  Donny, in camouflage pants and T-shirt, brought a camouflage backpack with him after putting his bike with theirs. He pulled on his shirt. “Dad and I tried hunting once; bought all the gear. It didn’t work out, but it might be useful this time.” He pointed to Lily’s sweatshirt. “That is not a camouflage color. It’s more like a here-I-am-come-get-me color.”

  She made a face at him.

  He shrugged and withdrew a digital video camera from the backpack. “Canon Vixia HF G-twenty, with telephoto,” he said. “Dad never went halfway when he wanted something. You should see our home theater set-up.” He returned it to his backpack.

  She said to Lily, “You don’t have to, but I’m doing this.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t come. I just said we could die.”

  “Whoa.” Donny backed up. “Die? I must have missed that staff meeting.”

  “Lily found something.”

  “Colter is building up an arsenal at his farm. I decoded some of his stuff on his hard drive; stuff that looks like farm supplies but is really guns and ammunition and bombs, lots of bombs. Those twins you told us about are bomb guys.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Shana pointed to the hills. “There’s only one way to find out.” She reached for Donny’s backpack. “Sorry about your mom.”

  He pulled the backpack away. “We better get going.”

  “I found something else out, too,” Lily said. “He and dad were working together. I haven’t found out what it was yet, but they were doing something together.” She wiped away a tear. “It sort of clinches that dad is guilty, doesn’t it?”

  Donny embraced her. “You can wait here.”

  Shana nodded her agreement with Donny.

  “I have a little something I want to give him, but I have to get closer to do it.”

  The ride along the service road wasn’t as difficult as the mountain bike trail they’d taken yesterday. Lily and Donny had an easier time keeping closer to her as they climbed along a number of switchbacks to get a bit higher into the hills than their previous spot. Other than the young, second-growth woods to their right, it had less plant cover, but it had a much better view of Colter’s farm from the north. Buildings and sections of the main compound in the northeast corner that were blocked last time were clearly visible this time.

  As soon as they were laid out on the bluff overlooking the farm, Donny got out the Canon and started recording.

  “They’re doing a lot of standing around and talking,” he said. “Most of them are at that garage. I didn’t see those big piles of dirt around it yesterday. Can you see where they’ve been digging?”

  Lily looked down at the farm. “No.”

  He tugged on his T-shirt. “Notice what they’re wearing?”

  She brought out binoculars from her small pack and looked down at the men in camouflage gear. “There’s about ten of them. Where are the rest?”

  “Maybe they’re in those trucks.”

  Two troop transports approached the garage. They stopped to let the ten men in before entering it.

  Looking through a small pair of binoculars, Lily asked, “Why load up into trucks just to drive into a garage?”

  Donny said, “And how could that garage hold those trucks?”

  “And two Hummers,” she said.

  Two Hummers drove into the garage. All four vehicles were camouflage shades of green and brown.

  “Four huge vehicles drive into a garage that’s only large enough for maybe four cars. How’d they do that?”

  She said, “I hate math word problems.”

  Lily pointed. “Then you’re going to totally hate this.”

  A squad of another ten men in combat gear complete with camouflaged faces and helmets, and carrying automatic rifles, approached the garage.

  “This is like trying to see how many people you can get into a phone booth or a Volkswagen Beetle.”

  She looked at Donny. “Did those people carry guns?”

  Lily said, “Or a bazooka? I think that’s a bazooka.”

  A group of six men followed the squad of ten. Three of the men carried rectangular canisters. The other three men carried large, khaki-colored metal cases.

  Donny leaned out a bit more over the cliff. “We know now where they were digging. And those are portable rocket launchers. And I think it’s time we got out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because two of those men with rocket launchers just looked up at us and pointed.”

  Something buzzed loudly and zipped past overhead from behind. It circled and returned to hover over them. A contraption about two-feet square, made of metal and wires, held up by propellers at its four corners like a helicopter, drifted back and forth above them. Two lenses adjusted to focus on them.

  A second, louder buzz came up the cliff and flew past.

  “An RPA,” Donny said, “remotely piloted aircraft.” When she and Lily just kept looking at him, he said, “Drones.”

  The second one, a lumpy plane about six feet long and with a propeller at the rear, circled above them and came back. It roared past and returned to the farm. The helicopter contraption rose up and hovered over them for a few seconds longer before it chased after the lumpy plane.

  What had she got them into? This was that moment of action or paralysis mom told her every agent in the field experienced when confronted with imminent danger. You either engaged or retreated. You had to make that decision quicker than a finger snap. If you froze, you were dead. Lily and Donny were looking to her to be like mom, but mom had years of training to be able to evaluate a situation like this and make a quick decision.

  Donny still held the camera out over the cliff to record activity on the farm. When Lily started to speak, they heard the barking.

  “We’re being hunted.” Colter’s militia was a superior opponent. “Run.”

  Donny snatched up his backpack. “What about the bikes?”

  “For
get the bikes. They’ll be watching the road and there’s no other way down from here on them. We have to run.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “If we go south down the hill through the woods we can get to the Harding farm. They’ll help us.” And she’d be bringing the danger right to them.

  “Wait.” Lily took out her phone and pushed a few buttons. Her head kept nodding as the barking got closer and she counted down silently. “There, now we can go.”

  “Why don’t we call someone?” Donny took out his phone.

  “There’s little signal up here because of the mountains. Saleha told me it’s almost a dead zone.”

  “But she just sent something.”

  Lily said, “I sent something to Colter’s farm. It’s a direct line of sight transmission from up here. Did you want to call him?”

  Donny tried his phone anyway. He got nothing.

  The barking, joined by men shouting, was rapidly coming closer. They were running now that they had their bearing.

  “Come on.” Lily pulled on Donny.

  Quicker than snapping fingers, he was crying out in pain and clutching his left ankle.

  Lily screamed. “A snare.” She glared at Shana with wide, terrified eyes. “You’re the amazon, do something!”

  “It’s cutting into my leg.” He tossed the camera to Shana. “Are you really as fast as you told us?”

  She nodded.

  “Get that to your mom. She has to call the FBI or someone.”

  Lily tried helping him, but Donny pushed her away.

  “Get out of here, now! RUN!”

  A Rottweiler came charging for them from the woods.

  Unable to free himself and stuck where he was, Donny swung his backpack into the dog, sending it rolling and sliding toward the edge of the cliff. He then grabbed his ankle and fell over.

  Lily hollered at her, “We have to help him,”

  Six men and two more Rottweilers charged out from the woods.

  “No. We have to go.”

  Donny had regained his feet and faced the men holding his backpack up as if it were Green Lantern’s ring.

  She and Lily started running down the hill, but she quickly left Lily behind and entered the woods alone. The dogs barked and growled, Lily screamed. Then she heard nothing. Had they used a silencer on her?

  She stopped and looked back. The dogs started barking with eagerness again, but they were receding rather than coming closer. After listening until she could barely hear the dogs, she ran back up the hill.

  Another helicopter contraption buzzed overhead.

  She ducked back into cover under the trees.

  The surveillance drone, bigger and with only three, larger propellers, alternated between hovering over the clearing and zigzagging back and forth above the trees. It continued this for close to ten minutes before finally leaving.

  The men came across the clearing up near the cliff. The three dogs were on leashes and struggled to get free but did obey their handlers. Donny, limping, and Lily, helping him as much as she could, were surrounded by the men. Their wrists were bound in front with plastic straps. They had bandaged Donny’s ankle.

  Leaning against the tree for support, she aimed the camera, started recording again and zoomed in on the group.

  One of the dogs raised its head, pulled hard on its leash and pivoted to point in her direction. Its handler raised binoculars to look before pointing directly at her.

  She pushed away from the tree and ran as fast as she could toward the Harding farm.