by Ed Hurst
Pulling up beside the bus, he decided sight-seeing was not what he needed. He presented himself as a fellow Christian on vacation, and asked if he could join them, offering his services as translator. Without hesitation, they welcomed him.
Not everything had been sweetness and light. Some evenings he would pickup a wireless signal just strong enough to get online. Still somewhat fearful, he decided to install the Linux CD to his hard drive, wiping away Windows. The latter simply held too much risk for him. After figuring out how to get the firewall working, he felt much more secure, but changed his MAC address pretty regularly.
Naturally, he scanned for news reports of the incident back in that Midwestern city. As near as he could discern, his and Burk’s diversion had served its purpose. It was after his second day there in Juarez he finally saw a preliminary report of the explosion, then an obituary on the professor. Then, there was nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. When he visited some of the underground patriot forums, they seemed to be saying there was a large number of SWAT officers killed. Over the next few weeks, it seemed also there was a slight up-tick in the number of shootouts with police in areas associated with patriot activity. A couple of police cruisers were bombed, and somebody shot up the front of an urban police station with a machine gun. There were other, similar incidents. It’s not as if he and Burk had opened a flood gate, but he decided there was a distinct response among those who objected to the rising police state.
There also appeared to be a matching rise in police brutality. He found several stories like the city police beating and threatening with death a drug suspect because he refused permission to search his house without a warrant. There were a few national events, such as the brazen attempt to plant evidence in one Congressman’s office. The Capitol Police announced a bomb threat and cleared the building. One staffer had been puking in the bathroom, and started to leave his office when he spotted someone who was not on any Congressional staff, but wearing one of the staff badges. This man was carrying a box into a certain Congressman’s office, the door held by one of the police officers. In spite of dizziness, the staffer was quick-witted enough to snap a picture with his cellphone without being noticed. Congressional leaders and the White House got into a stand-off over possession of the planted evidence.
Of all people, Michael was not surprised the major media outlets played down most of this. How often had an investigative story of his been spiked? Or how often had he been ordered by his own editorial supervisors to use propaganda from some bureaucrat or company? His impressions came from double-checking each story against independent Internet outlets or those based outside the US. While they, too, could publish nonsense, at least he was free to choose – when he had time. He hadn’t the time to investigate things too deeply. He was actually more worried about Burk. When he left Burk at the tree house, the young man promised he wouldn’t stay. He would check again with the woman in the barn, then move north as soon as possible, before heading back to the West Coast. Michael kept telling himself Burk was probably smarter about avoiding the police in the first place. Still, he had insisted Burk take some of his cash just in case.
Michael had been forced into frugality during his first year out of college free-lancing. When he got the job at the publishing house, he never bothered to adapt to the materialism his co-workers celebrated. Sure, he dressed better than before, but that was a requirement for the job. He had traveled quite extensively as a mere reporter, then less often, but staying longer as a feature writer – all at company expense. The accountant congratulated him on avoiding frivolous expenses. He had saved up quite a bit, paid cash for the inexpensive new car he had bought last year, and had paid a year’s lease in advance on his apartment in a distinctly middle-class area. Aside from the infrequent socializing with his previous editor, and mandatory office parties, he never spent a lot of time with co-workers. He also got the jobs they didn’t. He had figured he had just enough to get by in Mexico for awhile without hitting an ATM. He left with most of the money he brought, though, because the mission insisted on feeding and housing him.
It was getting dark when he spotted the first cell tower near Blythe, and decided to call his old Bible study leader back home. Pulling out his cellphone, he realized it hadn’t been turned on in nearly two months. Once he and Burk joined up, he had turned it off and kept it in the truck, since there wasn’t anyone else he had wanted to talk to while planning their adventure.
No sooner had he pressed the “on” button, it rang. He nearly dropped it. Glancing at the number, he didn’t recognize it. Letting it ring twice more, he decided something was telling him he better take this call. As soon as he held it to his ear, there was no mistaking the voice on the other end.
“Michael, turn off your cell phone and leave it that way. Then check your email.”
“Terrell?” Click. He realized it was a recording, and did as the voice suggested, turning the phone back off. As the paranoia resurged, he took the next highway exit and headed south. He probably had just enough gas to make Brawley. It occurred to him his former editor was the sort of man who could easily have found someone at the phone company to program such a recording to play the instant his phone registered its presence on the air again. With mountains to his west blocking out the last few rays of the sun, it was suddenly quite dark. However, the dark had a ways to go catching up with the blackness of his fear.
At one point, as the road climbed over a ridge-line, he suddenly rolled down the window and threw out his cellphone into a deep canyon of the far side of the road. A few seconds later he remembered the older one, reached between the bucket seats and dug in a bag blindly while driving. That phone quickly followed the other. Wishing now he had decided to accept the invitation to stay in Juarez, he made it to Brawley with a couple of gallons to spare. He realized the camper was probably helping his fuel mileage; the memory of asking the old craftsman to make it aerodynamic as possible came to him. The camper allowed him room to sleep, have a desk and seat for his laptop, and still hold his gear. He had also asked for a hidden compartment. Having guns and grenades in his luggage made him a little nervous, in spite of the scrupulous observance of his privacy everyone practiced there in Juarez. He had had a tough time convincing Burk to keep his own handgun. These things occupied his mind while he refueled.
With the tank full again, he pulled over to a large empty parking lot. Michael was elated to find a wireless signal. He had been keeping up on his email, so it shouldn’t be hard to spot a message from Terrell, his former editor. He checked each account, even reading the spam, to make sure it didn’t slip through. There was nothing. There were a couple of interesting job offers, and he was glad to see them, since his cash reserves were getting uncomfortably low. Giving those two messages a preliminary response, he sat back and wondered what Terrell’s recording meant.
Flagstand. He suddenly remembered that war gaming site Terrell had convinced him to join. It had been amusing for awhile, but he let it slide when he took a trip for a story. This was some obscure site based in Poland, and the connection was less than perfect. This didn’t hurt the games, since they were based on strategy and taking turns, but it just wasn’t his kind of thing. He really had tried to like it, and Terrell made so much of it, but it just didn’t grab Michael. That is, until just now, when he remembered the membership came with a free webmail account. Wracking his brain, he finally recalled the user name and password, and stumbled around the site interface looking for the link to the webmail. The site had been updated, and Michael was lost for a moment. Finally, he spotted it and clicked.
There were a half-dozen game challenge messages, and right at the bottom something from Terrell. Growling about the lag time, he waited for the message window to display.
“Don’t go home. Don’t go near your car. Nothing you left here is worth your life. Meet me at the game room.”
Michael sat staring at the screen for awhile. Then he closed the connection and put his laptop in suspend mode.
He lay staring out the skylight for a long time before finally falling asleep.
Chapter 22
Michael studied the menu for awhile. He decided something from the collection of wild fowl would be more palatable, and finally chose the roast ptarmigan. He just didn’t think he could stomach any of the wild game animals with horns and hooves, and certainly nothing with claws. With little else to go on, he decided someone here would call Terrell to notify him Michael had arrived. Maybe it would be the waitress who had the hots for Terrell.
His former editor liked this little restaurant, and had once made a pun, calling it “the game room” because the entire menu was wild game. There was actually an ancient pinball game in one corner, so it took Michael a minute to catch on to the pun before he chuckled. Terrell loved the Sample Platter, which contained each time a slightly different random collection of bite-sized pieces of various creatures, variously cooked. Michael had turned down most of Terrell’s invitations to return to “the game room,” but not this time.
He had been staring at a teenager playing the pinball machine quite skillfully. The thing was making a racket, and Michael jumped when Terrell crossed his line of sight and sat down without speaking. The low lighting of the place made Terrell’s dark complexion even darker. In full light, you would have seen somewhat rounded features on a long face, and a rather square jaw. With is silver hair cut permanently in a flat top, and no hint of facial hair, you could never guess Terrell’s age or his ethnic background.
Staring down into a glass he had brought with him, Terrell said just loudly enough to be heard, “You were too effective.”
“Too effective? At what?”
“I know the wire services avoided it for the most part, but I heard through some friends you and your buddy managed to kill the entire city SWAT Team.” Terrell looked up with a faint smile.
Michael stared at his hands on the table in front of him. “I had no idea.” Suddenly he felt oddly dirty.
“Where’d you learn about LAW rockets? That was some trick. And how did you keep the front door from opening? Most of the time, a tactical ram opens on the first knock.”
It was Michael’s turn to smile a little. “Well, we had read about rams, and had added an extra facing of two-by-sixes to the door frame. That would require them to actually break the door, not just knock it open. It was a pretty solid door. As for the LAW, the instructions are written right on it. Ran a very thin piece of nylon fishing line across the porch down low. It was tied to a pin holding everything up. When it was tripped, we had a frame drop straight down from the ceiling with the LAW cradled, already set to fire. An old heavy brick was rigged to fall on the trigger when the bracket was all the way down. I just looked up on the Net about shaped charges. Burk said something about shrapnel, and we added the plate as an afterthought. We found it in a bin outside a metal shop while looking for bars to form fake climbing rungs on our sewer shaft.”
Terrell turned his head a bit, still eying Michael. “This is the first I heard of a sewer shaft.”
Michael waited while a cup of tea was set before him. He turned to make sure the waitress was gone, then face Terrell again. “I had been wondering how we could divert attention from our tunnel, give us a little more time, when I saw some construction on campus. They had pulled some old iron pipe out of the ground. It was rusted, but still solid. It was next to a concrete junction box about to go into the ground. I saw the short access shaft on top of the box and it gave me the idea to create a fake one in our basement. It happened we had a floor drain running straight into a sewer below the house.”
Talking into his raised glass, Terrell murmured, “That explains the three days it took them to release the bulletin.” He took a slow sip, then lowered the glass and swallowed. “That trick with the claymore was sharp. I’d never seen that before.”
Michael looked down self-consciously, “The hand generator was hidden on a frame member where the open door would hit it. The hinges were well greased. We really weren’t expecting to kill very many. We were just hoping to make some noise and hurt a few of them.”
“Eight at the front door, four from the force of the ram shooting backwards when the missile hit the same spot – good estimate you made there. Six from the claymore on the back porch. I hear the SAC was terribly angry about being fooled.” Terrell grinned as if proud. “However, that wasn’t the worst of it. You took out one of the Shadow Government’s favorite sons.”
“Literal ‘son’?” Michael asked.
“Cousin by marriage to the Rockefellers.”
“Well, that detail got by me. Still, I’m not sorry for his loss.” He was still ambivalent about the others.
Terrell looked over Michael’s shoulder. “I don’t blame you. Here’s the food.”
They engaged in some fake chatter about the local football team while the waitress popped open a folding tray rest, then swung down the loaded tray with platters, bowls, and saucers, topped with a basket of warm yeast rolls. She flirted with Terrell while scattering the meal on the table, then slowly retreated, turning back at least once to wink at the older man again.
As soon as she was far enough away, Terrell’s sunny smile faded quickly. As he rearranged dishes to suit him, he spoke with some of the seriousness he had in that closet three months ago. “Still, that’s what will make it impossible for you and your buddy to do it again. Losing a few ground troops is no big deal.” He took a bit of something meaty, and while chewing, “Taking down a family officer they won’t overlook.”
Michael picked at his bird, buttered a roll, the looked up. “So... Now what?”
“Glad you asked,” replied Terrell with a grin.
Chapter 23
It was Saturday, just a couple of days from New Year’s. They stood on top of a sand dune. The morning was cold and thinly overcast, but the breeze was gentle. Michael had driven back out of the city after the game dinner, and slept in his camper. Then he had come back and met Terrell over breakfast, since he insisted Michael help him fly his radio-controlled glider. There were a few others in this semi-desert area outside the city, most flying motorized models. Terrell showed off with a few stunts, and then brought the glider in toward them, slowing it as it dropped, finally stalling it just over their heads. Terrell caught it in one hand.
The glider was quite large. Though made of featherweight materials, it was rather heavy because of its size. Had Michael tried that catch, he would have dropped it because of the weight. Terrell was six-two and quite athletic. Michael knew he worked out, but was not aware of the details.
Terrell set it down on the sand, dropping to one knee. Looking up at Michael, he asked, “Care to guess how much of a payload it could carry and still fly well?”
Michael was a little tired of the games, but Terrell could hardly be pushed along. “Oh, five pounds?” he ventured.
“Close,” Terrell announced. “Five kilos. I tested it a couple of times. It’s sluggish, and won’t turn nearly as sharp, but is much more stable. Hard to launch single-handed without a good head wind and a high spot.”
“And?”
“There are almost no metal parts. The radio receivers are tiny these days, and the servo motors have just a bit of copper winding. Only the battery is of any substance.” Terrell went on like a salesman.
“Unless your payload has metal in it,” Michael offered.
“Nah, just some wiring.” Terrell stood up. “I figure the idea is good for just one hit. Right now, air defense around critical buildings won’t pick up model aircraft below a certain density, and below a certain mass of metal. This one was custom designed and built by hand several years ago. Today, you can order a prefab which is stronger, lighter and a whole lot cheaper. It’s not what a purist would do, but if you needed a dozen or so cheap and quick, they’re good enough.”
Michael caught on to the theory, at least. “One at a time by radio control? Aren’t there risks with such a lag time between them? Even if you could teach me how to do it,
that’s still six separate flights for each of us to control. And wouldn’t someone pickup the radio frequency?”
Terrell held up a plastic box, resembling a tiny MP3 player. “They call these tiny computers ‘Arduino.’ You can order them very cheaply with a GPS module and a weather receiver commonly used in meteorological balloons. With these, it’s no longer necessary to have expensive tracking radar dishes for the weather balloons. Any antenna tuned to the proper frequency can receive the weather data, along with coordinates in three dimensions. Just add navigation software...”
“Okay.” Michael asked, “How much of this do you already have? And why do you need me?”
Chapter 24
Michael did not like those people. He didn’t think it was a prejudice, because he didn’t care what their ethnic or national identity was. What bothered him was the way they acted. It was as if he were three years old, and trying to convince some adults who spoke another language to fix a car. Their heavily accented English sounded almost like scolding. He didn’t recognize the language in which they chattered to each other, so it was probably Persian or the like. Arabic he recognized by the unique sound, as well as Hebrew and Egyptian, but this was something else. Finally, they brought out the package and took the money Terrell had given him.
He assumed Terrell didn’t want to be seen in this part of town. With his hair and beard regrown, Michael was an unknown. They dismissed him summarily, and he wanted to say, “Feelings mutual,” but didn’t want to set them off. As quickly as he could without looking like a man in fearful flight, he left the littered street in the smelly neighborhood, and drove back to the dunes. Terrell had also given him just enough cash to fill his tank on the way back.