After five minutes or so he called in again.
“Control, this is Rusty.”
“Go ahead, Rusty.”
“I only got ahold of two other drivers. David is on I-10 eastbound, mile marker 364.
“Marty is on County Road 1355. There are no mile markers, but he says he’s three miles north of I-10.”
“Ten four. Hold your position as long as you can, Rusty, in case he calls in again. I know it’s getting dark, though. Estimate your travel time and leave in time for you to be here before sunset.
“I know now that you’re close you want to go out and get him. But we know he’s okay, there’s no sense in pushing our luck by operating in the dark.”
Rusty hesitated a full thirty seconds before answering.
Karen knew he hated the instructions he’d been given. But he wasn’t in charge.
Karen was.
“Ten four.”
Karen got out of her chair once again and went back to the grid map.
She put a blue push pin on Interstate 10’s mile marker 364.
She put another blue pin on County Road 1355, three miles north of I-10.
She opened a drawer and took out a ruler and a compass.
Rusty and David were nine miles apart.
Marty was a little farther from Rusty. About twelve miles.
Using the compass, Karen drew a circle around Rusty’s red pin.
A circle that represented everything in every direction within a twelve mile radius.
She explained to those assembled around the control center, watching her every move.
“Rusty’s radio was able to pick up transmissions up to twelve miles away. Brad is somewhere inside that circle.
“Tomorrow we start again, but when we’re well-rested and some something slightly resembling daylight. We’ll print grid maps of that circle and search everything in it. Every highway, every county road, every farm road. Every driveway if we have to.
“Tomorrow we’ll find him and bring him home.”
For the benefit of the other drivers, who’d picked up various bits and pieces of the radio traffic, but who’d wisely stayed quiet and out of the way, she gave an update.
“All units, return home. It’ll be getting dark soon and Rusty has heard from Brad. He’s okay and is prepared to hunker down for another night.
“We’ve narrowed down the area where he is. It’s too late to go in there and search it tonight. But he’s okay and he’s tough and he’ll survive another night. Tonight we’ll focus our efforts in the area we know him to be and we’ll find him.”
Some of the drivers grumbled a bit. None of them liked the idea of their friend spending another night alone.
But Karen’s tone of voice was matter-of-fact and assured.
Like her decision or not, they would not argue the point.
If anyone had the right to argue for an immediate rescue attempt it was Sami.
But she had complete confidence in Karen’s judgment.
And honestly, she’d been expecting the worst. After three days, she was fully expecting to hear news that they’d found her husband’s body.
Once she heard he was okay, she was willing to wait another day to welcome him home.
And to kick his butt.
-32-
Frank had only been to Plainview once in his life.
In 1995 a domestic terrorist named Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Authorities sent out a call for help near and far.
As the lead homicide detective in Bexar County at the time, Frank volunteered his services and immediately set out.
His commanding officer, ever a cheapskate, told him to drive his unmarked police car.
“It’ll be cheaper than airfare plus car rental.”
Frank grumbled something but followed orders, as was his nature.
He left immediately and made good time. As it turned out, his next available flight wasn’t for another ten hours. It would have had a four hour layover in Dallas.
He actually drove to Oklahoma City faster than he could have flown there.
Driving through the Texas Panhandle on his way to the bombing site, he’d stopped at a convenience store in Plainview to use the restroom and buy a Dr. Pepper.
While pumping his gas he noticed a nearby billboard with Jimmy Dean’s likeness and which read:
WELCOME TO PLAINVIEW
PROUD HOME TOWN OF
JIMMY DEAN
Until that moment Frank never knew where Jimmy Dean had come from. And since his heart doctor made him swear off pork products, he very seldom savored Mr. Dean’s delectable pork sausage.
No, Frank’s recollections of Jimmy Dean came from his younger days, when he was a kid listening to country music with his father.
Actually, back in those days they called it “country and western” music. It was different then. It was more pure.
Jimmy Dean was one of Frank’s father’s favorite artists.
If it hadn’t been for that experience, Frank wouldn’t have remembered the tiny town of Plainview at all.
“Here it is,” John said as they drove by the Plainview City Limit sign. “It won’t be long now.”
Frank wasn’t sure what that meant. He got a knot in the pit of his stomach and wondered if it meant the same as, “End of the road for you, Frank. We don’t have any more need of you so we’re gonna shoot you down.”
Frank was exhausted. They’d driven non-stop, except to siphon fuel from two abandoned trucks along the way. At a top speed of twenty miles an hour, and frequently much slower, it had taken them forever to travel the four hundred miles or so from Kerrville to Plainview.
And every inch of the way Frank had had a loaded weapon pointed at his back.
Being under the gun does funny things to a man’s mind. He’s ever mindful that he must watch what he says, and how he says it. Saying the wrong thing to an already angry man could cause him to pull the trigger in anger.
For that matter, he was very careful not to take any corners too fast. To slow down for every pothole and bump in the road. John’s finger was always on the trigger, and the slightest twitch could result in an accidental discharge.
John probably wouldn’t have felt bad about such an accident.
But Frank would quite possibly feel very bad.
Even worse, John had been nodding off now and then, despite Frank’s constant efforts to carry on what he hoped was a pleasant conversation.
He knew people did all kinds of things when they slept. They stretched. They scratched their noses. They had bad dreams. Sometimes they tensed their muscles.
And twitched their fingers.
Along the long drive, Frank got the sense he’d gotten through to Justin. They talked about their boyhoods. Things they had in common. Girls they’d dated and mistakes they’d made.
Frank was careful not to tell either of his captors he was a retired cop or a former Marine. Neither, he thought, would help his cause.
It was sometimes difficult, therefore, to talk about his life’s experiences in a way the brothers could relate to. They’d seen life from a different point of view.
To them, cops weren’t people who protected them.
To them, cops were people who came around at inopportune times to ask what they were doing and why.
And sometimes took them to hideous places they did not want to be.
Still, there were a few subjects they could brooch without setting the brothers off. Hunting and fishing and camping in the woods. Women, children and dogs.
And motorcycles.
Frank Woodard started riding in high school when his dad got him an old 100cc Kawasaki for his 16th birthday.
He eventually owned a 1923 Indian.
Justin worked at a custom motorcycle shop for a time, and helped restore a 1923 Indian.
It wasn’t the same motorcycle. But it helped the two bond a bit and opened the door to hours of motorcycle stories.
John mostly stayed o
ut of the conversation, though he seemed to listen fondly to some of the stories they told.
Justin gave indications he’d taken to Frank by the time they were nearing their final destination, calling Frank, “my new friend” and saying he was looking forward to talking motorcycles again later.
It might well be moot, though. Frank got the sense it would be John, and not Justin, who ultimately decided his fate.
And try as he might, he just didn’t see how he could overpower two younger and stronger men.
Especially since one had a .45 aimed at his side and his finger on the trigger.
-33-
It was Justin who’d bragged, on the long journey, about how they’d taken over the Food World Distribution Center as the world was freezing over.
It was obviously a major coup for a family of mostly losers.
From listening to stories of some of Justin’s family members and the stupid things they’d done, Frank was amazed they’d been able to pull it off.
Much less keep possession of the center once they had it.
Justin told tales of blocking all the doors with heavy pallets that would not only keep people from accessing the doors. They would also absorb any bullets which came flying through the doors toward them.
They weren’t shy about firing bullets the other way, either. Whenever they heard someone outside contemplating a break-in, a volley of bullets sent through the doors and walls always sent them running.
Frank suspected it was a matter of timing and uncertainty.
Timing because the Dwyers were lucky enough to have come up with the plan to storm the center first. Undoubtedly others would have tried the same thing but were too late.
And uncertainty because anyone wanting to assault the center and capture it for themselves was unsure how many men and firepower on the inside they were up against.
It might be a few men with a handful of weapons and limited ammunition.
Or it could be a very well-armed and well-trained army.
Surely the distribution center was a crown jewel in the eyes of anyone who came across it. A huge multi-acre warehouse stock full of food, water and supplies. He imagined it was coveted by many a gang of roving looters and marauders.
On the other hand, any and all efforts to gain entry was rebuffed by deadly gunfire.
The gangs on the outside tried to return fire a few times, but the Dwyers were saved by the protective pallets.
In the end the would-be conquerors invariably gave up and went home. Shooting people inside a building when you couldn’t see them was a tough thing to do.
There were other places to go. Other buildings to conquer.
Other prizes that didn’t shoot back at them.
John, of course, listened just as intently to Justin’s stories about the Food World Distribution Center and how their family had come to own it.
He’d never been there. Never seen it. Didn’t even know it existed.
It was built the year after John went to prison.
It would be as new to John as it was to Frank.
Provided, of course, that Frank was allowed to live long enough to see it.
As they rolled into the center’s huge compound, they followed the signs to the receiving docks.
It was a macabre sight.
Here and there were half a dozen human bodies. Actually skeletons, still clothed and half covered by the new snow.
“Those are the people we killed by shooting through the doors and walls at them,” Justin explained to John. “Lucky shots, since we could hear them but couldn’t see them. We didn’t even know they were out here until I left to come and get you.”
Frank was incredulous.
“You mean you were the first one to ever leave this place?”
“The first one and the only one, unless somebody came out after I left. We were smart about the foods we ate and when we ate them. We tried to eat everything before it went bad. Now what’s mostly left is dehydrated stuff we have to cook with water, and some of the canned goods with a long shelf life. We eat those carefully, in case they’re tainted. But there’s plenty of food left, so there’s no real reason to leave here.”
John asked, “How in the hell do you eat canned goods carefully?”
“It was Danny’s idea,” he explained. “Like, for example, we’d open up a can of chili that expired two years before but which still looked good and smelled okay. Somebody with a strong stomach would taste it, just eat a couple of bites. If he said it had a metallic or moldy taste, we’d throw the whole batch out.
“But if he said it tasted okay we’d just cover the can and put it aside. If he didn’t get sick within twenty four hours somebody else would eat the rest of the can.
“If the second guy didn’t get sick and throw it up within another twenty four hours, we’d consider it safe and declare the pallet safe to eat.”
“What about water? What do you do for water?”
“Right after we took the place over we counted the number of pallets of water, and tried to figure out how long it would last us. It turned out there was a boatload of bottled water, and several other pallets of water in five gallon jugs.
“Somebody did some figuring and decided it was enough to last us for about three to four years.
“Well, remember all the scientists were saying the freeze was gonna last from seven to ten years. We knew that wasn’t gonna be enough.
“Even when we figured in all the pallets of juices and sodas, it wasn’t gonna be enough for ten years.
“So Crazy Eddie, he had this really messed up idea…”
John interrupted his brother mid-sentence.
“Crazy Eddie? Is that son of a bitch still alive?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how. But he is.”
Eddie Moats was family, but not by blood. He married one of their aunts years before.
He earned his nickname, “Crazy Eddie,” because of the outlandish stunts he pulled.
It was known far and wide that Eddie would accept any dare, no matter how stupid or unsafe.
Most of the family was entertained by his antics. Some of the women worried, convinced that Eddie would do one too many dangerous stunts and would kill himself.
And every member of the family not named Eddie questioned whether he was secretly insane.
-34-
“Anyway,” Justin continued, “Somebody came up with the idea that if we cut a hole in the ceiling, the smoke from our burn barrels inside the building would have a way to vent. And at the same time, since the smoke was warm when it went through the hole, it would melt the snow and ice on the roof and it would drip down.
“They said it would help in two ways. It would get the smoke out of the building and it would give us more water.
“And believe it or not, it worked like a charm. We kept a fifty gallon trash can on the floor directly beneath the hole. Sometimes the snow fell directly into the can, but usually it was just a steady drip of water.
“Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Every week or so we’d take the water and boil it, then put it into drinking water bottles we’d already emptied. Then we’d stack the rain water in the back of the warehouse.
“Eventually we ran out of the sealed water bottles and started using the rainwater. Once the thaw came, we started getting a lot more water from the roof. Whenever it rained we got so much water coming in we had to keep rolling the trash can out from under the hole and switching it out with another every few minutes.
“Now we’ve got enough water to last at least several more years. Pretty much every empty container in the place has been refilled with boiled rain water.”
“Yeah,” John said. “That’s nice and all, but I want to hear about Crazy Eddie. What did he do to cut the hole in the roof?”
“Oh, that. The roof is made of metal. And it’s like, sixty feet high or something. Way too high for any ladder.
“Some of the high-lift forklifts were used to put pallets on the highest shelve
s, and they went almost high enough, but not quite.
“Crazy Eddie said, hey, that’s no problem. He put a wide pallet on the forklift and put a sixteen foot ladder on the pallet.
“Then he climbed on board and had Joe lift him up as high as he could.
“He propped the ladder against the boom of the forklift and climbed all the way to the top of it.
“And there he was, without a tether or anything, standing on the top step of the ladder while every little movement was causing the pallet to sway back and forth.
“I thought he was going to tip the forklift over. Everybody else thought for sure he’d fall off the ladder.
“But he’s up there without a care in the world, using a cutting torch to cut a big hole in the ceiling above him.
“I don’t think there’s a single person in the whole place who thought he was going to come back down alive.
“I was going around taking bets. We didn’t bet with money or anything. We just took bets about how many minutes it would take him to fall. Whoever guessed worst had to pull guard duty for whoever guessed best for six months.
The brothers shared a belly laugh.
Frank just felt a bit sick to his stomach.
The thought these people would gleefully place bets on another man’s life told him more about their morality than anything else he’d learned thus far.
John changed the subject.
“So… how do we get in without getting shot as intruders?”
It was a valid question that Frank had been wondering about himself.
“Oh, we worked all that out before I left.”
“Well, I hope so.”
“All we gotta do is go to the personnel door between docks 44 and 45.
“That’s the door I left from and the door I’ll go back to.
“We worked out a code.
“I’ll go to that door, and I’ll beat on the door four times.
“Then I’ll wait a few seconds and beat on it four more times.
“Then three times, then four times again.
“If I don’t get an answer, it’s probably because no one is close enough to hear it. I’ll wait a few minutes and try again. And I’ll keep doing that until somebody is close enough to hear it.
One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Page 11