“Your range of motion. Did your physical therapist tell you have much mobility you lost?”
“No.”
“I’m going to schedule you to see the doc. He’ll look at your joints and how well you can move them. It’ll be totally up to him.”
The doctor told him he was borderline.
“I can pass you, but I’d rather not. Your arms are okay, but I’m worried about your ankle. If you were in combat and had to move in a hurry, your ankle might slow you down and hinder your progress.”
“Look, doc. I need to get out of this rinky dink little town. There’s nothing for me here but pain and bad memories. The Army is my only ticket out. Please don’t shoot me down.”
The doctor took pity on the horribly disfigured man and gave him his wish.
“Okay,” he told him as he signed the papers. “Congratulations. You’re in the Army now.”
It turned out the Army was good to Joe. The nickname, “Scarface” somehow followed him wherever he was stationed, but he got used to it. He got away from his hometown and never went back, earned a steady paycheck, and continued to hone his trade.
In addition to being able to repair anything on wheels, he learned to repair anything on tracks as well.
Fast forward many years, and Sergeant Joe Manson was re-upping for the very last time. He was nearing twenty years in the Army and starting to contemplate his retirement when there was a knock on his door.
It was two Army officers, decked out in service dress. One flashed a gold badge with a blue ring. The words inside the ring said:
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION COMMAND
Joe’s retirement plans just flew out the window.
It seemed the Army found out about Joe’s gambling problem.
Now, playing the ponies on the weekends wasn’t a problem, even to the United States Army.
Not even losing hundreds of dollars each weekend on dumb long shots that didn’t pay off was a problem.
Stealing government vehicle parts and selling them on the black market to help finance gambling losses… now that was a problem.
Joe Manson, AKA Scarface, landed in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary on a ten year sentence for grand larceny.
His stay at Leavenworth was undistinguished. He took a lot of crap for the way his face looked but never backed down. He had a lot of fights and spent a lot of time in the hole.
He gained the reputation as a tough guy.
And in prison, that more than anything earns a man respect.
Before long other inmates became hangers-on. He was a leader of men.
Men with questionable moral character, sure. But men nonetheless.
Just after the blackout there was a massive prison break at Leavenworth. When the power failed, generator power was supposed to kick in.
There was no backup plan to the backup plan, and when the backup generators didn’t come on chaos ensued.
Those doors which were open couldn’t be closed. They’d permanently be stuck in the open position.
The door to Cellblock A just happened to be open at that particular time, as a hack was pushing a first aid cart through it when the power went out.
The cons outnumbered the guards nine to one, and easily overpowered their captors and took their keys. Over three hundred inmates made their way out of the prison and scattered throughout the countryside.
Most of them were still there.
Ten of them joined Scarface and formed a gang which spent several days hiding in an abandoned Greyhound bus on a nearby highway.
Gradually, it became obvious that no one was coming after them.
The local cops and sheriff’s deputies largely closed up shop and went home to protect their own families.
Leavenworth hacks had no jurisdiction to search for them off prison grounds.
And they were deserting their posts by the dozens anyway.
The group, who called themselves “Scarface’s Savages,” went from one place to another raping and pillaging as they went.
And often they killed as well.
Somehow they caught wind of an underground bunker to the south and east of the prison. A bunker, it was said, which was stocked with enough supplies to last for years.
And they decided they wanted it for themselves.
Chapter 20
Dave forced the dream from his mind. He didn’t believe in premonitions. And even if he knew for certain the bunker in Kansas was under assault, he was at least three weeks away.
And he was on a mission to find and rescue little Beth.
If he went back to Kansas, it would be at least six weeks before he could return to the very spot he was now.
Six long weeks for Beth’s kidnappers to get even farther away. For their trail to grow even more cold.
No. He saw the bunker and the pillbox which sat atop it. It was protected by several heavily armed men and the approach to the pillbox’s ladder was littered with buried mines.
It was as well protected as a United States Marine Corps observation post in Iraq.
More so, even.
His family was safe.
He just knew they were.
He had to know it. He had no choice.
He cast off the dream as folly and put it out of his mind forever.
His watch was still ticking. He’d wound it that morning, just before he crashed.
It was just after 9 p.m.
Twenty one hundred hours. He’d burned off a couple hours of darkness, but it wasn’t that bad. At least now he’d be on his toes. He’d be more alert and more likely to spot an approaching threat while he still had time to avoid it.
He felt good, and was ready to get back on the road again.
He yawned and stretched and thought about changing his clothes.
But no. He’d lost enough time already.
He had no one to impress, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d traveled in his own funk to get a few more miles ahead.
He changed his socks, more for comfort than anything else. He hated the way crusty and sweaty cotton socks felt on his feet. Especially because they made him itch after the third day. He discovered that for the first time in Iraq, when he sometimes had to wait a week for clean socks.
That done, he grabbed his rifle and backpack and stepped out of the truck for the last time. He finished the last of a bottle of water and cast it aside, then made his way fifty yards up the highway to where his Explorer was waiting.
His windows were heavily tinted and the night was dark. Even with the night vision goggles it was hard to see the rear passenger window was broken.
Rather, it was the soft crunch beneath his boot from the glass pellets which had made up the shatterproof glass.
“Oh, crap.”
A quick inventory revealed that nothing was missing. The looters hadn’t discovered the mobility bag full of weapons beneath the blankets in the back.
Dave cursed his luck, as well as the looters.
“Why the hell did you have to break the window,” he muttered. “The damn doors weren’t even locked.”
And indeed they weren’t. The looters just found it easier to raise the butt of a rifle than to pull on the door handle.
That was okay. As long as it didn’t rain he’d be all right.
And even if it did rain, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. There were many more dry days in this part of the country than wet ones. It wouldn’t take the interior long to dry back out again.
Actually, his vehicle having a broken window might not be a bad thing.
Since the blackout began, Dave had lived by the principle of hiding in plain sight. He lived in a house he purposely made look vacant. He parked his Explorer on the freeway each day instead of trying to hide it in the woods. It was on the freeway for all the world to see, mixed in with all the other abandoned vehicles.
Because that’s where people expected it to be.
A lone vehicle driven off-road and hidden in a stand of trees would have attracted muc
h more attention.
A vehicle with a shattered window would probably be passed by when the next looters came along. They’d likely presume the Explorer had already been ransacked and relieved of anything of value.
The only potential problem Dave could think of was someone running alongside the slow moving vehicle and trying to climb their way in as he passed by.
It would be a fatal mistake.
Dave took his handgun from its holster and placed it on the dashboard, immediately in front of the steering wheel.
It would be more readily accessible there.
If he heard someone trying to climb into the vehicle they’d be directly behind him and out of his view.
But he wouldn’t need to see them. He’d merely take his pistol and rest it on his shoulder, then fire multiple times into the window area and back seat behind him.
He’d keep firing until he heard the thud of a body falling onto the highway.
And he wouldn’t even feel bad about it.
The night was uneventful. Once free of the city, vehicles were fewer and farther between. He was able to creep up to about twenty miles an hour for a time, his best speed yet.
It abruptly came to an end when he almost rear-ended a black hearse. It hid in the shadows of a much larger tractor trailer fifty yards in front of it, and Dave didn’t see the hearse until it was almost too late.
He slowed down to fifteen again.
He would have loved to have put those extra miles behind him tonight.
But he couldn’t afford to crash and to have to hoof it the rest of the way.
He had no way of knowing how many days the kidnappers were ahead of him.
But he figured they were averaging no more than twenty miles a day in their horse-drawn pickup.
As long as Dave did a hundred or more he’d be gaining on them pretty quickly.
Chapter 21
He was a rather odd sight at Bigham’s Ford that morning. Even the two horses tied to the bumper of a nearby F-250 heavy duty work truck looked at him as though he were crazy.
“I don’t know why he brought us here,” the Palomino said to the Morgan. “There’s no water here, nothing to graze on.”
“He’s frickin’ nuts,” the Morgan replied. “There’s no other explanation.”
“Well, if he thinks I’m carrying that thing on my back, he’s nuts indeed.”
“Oh, shut up and quit complaining. You are a pack horse, after all. You pack stuff. It’s what you do. You don’t get to pick and choose what you carry. That’s the human’s job.
“Besides, we have it pretty sweet. We live in a stable instead of out in the sun like those other nags. We have shade. And they bring us apple nuggets sometimes.”
“Not often enough.”
Sal turned and looked at them.
“Uh, oh,” the Morgan said. “I think he heard us. Do you think he heard us?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a human. He has no sense. Humans think they’re smarter than us just because they can light a fire and tie their shoes. They think we’re nothing but dumb animals. They don’t even know we can communicate.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. If they only knew…”
Benny had offered to send someone with his brother. Someone younger and stronger.
But Sal had refused. He was stubborn like that.
“I’ve been doing my own lifting since I was a young boy. Well over sixty years now. The day I stop doing my own work will be the day I’m no longer worthwhile. That’s the day I start digging my own grave.”
“But he can also provide you security.”
“Oh hell, Benny. Nobody’s gonna attack a broken down old man. What do I have to offer them?”
“The horses, for one.”
“If anybody’s desperate enough to come up and demand the horses I’ll give them to them. They’re not worth dying for. But I don’t think it’ll happen. There aren’t many people who live around here and I’ve met most of them over the last couple of months. They’re good people, from what I’ve seen. Not the horse stealin’ type.”
“The residents, no. They’re honest. But we still have people passing through who might not be so upstanding.”
“Like I said, if they demand the horses I’ll give them away. You’ve got plenty more. And they’re not worth dying for.
“I’ll be okay, Benny. Don’t you worry about me.”
As it turned out, it wasn’t horse thieves who’d give Sal fits on this particular day.
It was lug nuts.
The wheels on new pickup trucks were installed using impact wrenches. And they were a bit too tight for an old man to loosen with a good old fashioned lug wrench.
For although he still bragged he could carry his own gear, the truth was Sal had lost a bit of his upper body and arm strength in recent years.
And loosening tight lug nuts wasn’t as easy as it once was.
He grunted and paused, then wiped the sweat from his brow.
He looked skyward and cursed the hot sun. It certainly wasn’t making the job any easier.
This was the third truck he tried.
The lot was full of them. Brand new fancy pickups that would probably still be there a hundred years from now, their shiny new paint jobs faded then and high weeds growing in their wheel wells.
That would be quite a spectacle for somebody else to see.
Not him, though. He’d be long gone by then.
Hell, he might be gone by the end of the day if he kept fighting those lug nuts with everything he had and risking a heart attack.
He finally stood up, cursing his aching back and bad knees.
He looked around, and saw that the overhead door to the Service Department had been smashed in. As though looters had need of a spare transmission or a catalytic converter.
Sal had worked on cars all his life. Not officially. Officially he was an insurance salesman for most of his working life.
But he loved tinkering on engines. He was what his generation called a “backyard mechanic.”
He was the guy in the neighborhood everyone brought their cars to when they weren’t running right. He was able to fix most things, have a couple of beers, and occasionally make a new friend.
He seemed to remember, back in those days, that a few “tricks of the trade” came in very handy on occasion.
One of them was the “cheater wrench.”
Sal never knew who coined the term, exactly.
He knew it wasn’t him, or any of his friends.
His father actually used the term himself. Said he used the method working on his old Ford Model A.
That was a long time ago.
He walked into the darkened service bay and looked around.
There was trash strewn everywhere. Parts and tools too. It was as though the looters who’d broken in had been furious.
Undoubtedly because there was nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing of real value to them.
“Well, what in heck did you suspect,” Sal muttered to no one in particular. “It’s a service department, not a damned supermarket.”
He seemed to get an answer to his own question when he saw, in the corner of the cavernous room, an overturned snack machine.
The huge glass window which made up the bulk of its door was shattered and every single snack was missing.
Except for one single solitary package of spearmint flavored gun, which he picked up and placed into his pocket.
Then he spied what he’d come for. A section of pipe, maybe four feet long.
A “cheater wrench.”
He supposed the name originated when a mechanic had a hard time removing an extremely tight nut.
Perhaps he used a pipe similar to this one to place over the end of the wrench to give him additional leverage when turning the nut.
And perhaps another mechanic, ridiculing the first, said, “Hey, that’s cheating!”
Maybe that’s where the term came from.
Sal seemed
to remember someone once saying, “Give me a cheater pipe and a place to stand and I’ll move the earth.”
Or maybe that was a “stick long enough and a place to stand.”
“Or maybe a “fulcrum and a place to stand.”
In any case, he couldn’t remember for sure. His memory wasn’t what it used to be.
He couldn’t even remember who said it. Archimedes, maybe. Or Gilbert and Sullivan.
In any case, it didn’t matter.
What mattered was he’d found his pipe. His cheater wrench. And it should do in seconds what he’d been trying in vain to do for half an hour.
He returned to the truck he’d been trying to pull the wheels off of.
He placed the lug wrench back on one of the nuts, placed the pipe over the lug wrench, and pushed down on the end of the pipe.
The nuts loosened easily.
Success.
Half an hour later he was atop one of the horses, the other carrying two wheels and tires, wrapped in heavy canvas tarps.
One horse looked to the other and whispered, “It’s about damn time.”
Chapter 22
Back on Benny’s ranch, Sal rode directly to the old red Ranger pickup truck that had gotten him and Beth from Kansas City to California.
It was listing badly to starboard, its front tire on the passenger’s side completely flat. The rear tire on the same side was almost there as well.
Beth looked up at him.
“What’s the long pipe for? And that funny looking X-shaped thing?”
She was referring to the cheater pipe and lug wrench Sal had strapped across the pack horse’s pack at the last minute.
“We’re taking those with us,” Sal replied. They’ll come in handy if the other two tires go flat on us.”
He climbed off the horse and said, “But first things first, child. Let me see how well you’ve done your job in my absence.”
Beth stood to one side of the old truck and beamed. In one hand she held a little whisk broom. In the other was a full-sized house broom, which she’d discovered wasn’t much good in the small confines of the truck’s cab.
But it had worked exceedingly well to sweep the heavy layer of dust from the bed.
Payback: Alone: Book 7 Page 7