“I sense a ‘but…’ coming.”
“But… the biggest problem is the mines.”
“The mines? What mines?”
“The hillside leading up to the pillbox is covered with buried anti-personnel mines.”
“What? Seriously? All I see is low grass.”
“You have to know what to look for.”
“Okay. So educate me then, Einstein.”
“When the hunter left the bunker you weren’t here to see it. I was here to watch him leave. He seemed to zig-zag just a bit after he crawled out of the pillbox and while he walked down the hill.
“Nothing drastic, mind you. But he definitely didn’t walk a straight line.”
“Maybe he was drunk.”
“Hardly. You didn’t notice when he returned carrying the rabbits. But I did because I was watching for it. He did the same thing when he walked up the hill carrying the rabbits.
“He had his radio out and was listening to it.”
“Okay, now you’ve lost me.”
“He had someone in the pillbox guiding him through the mine field. Some on the inside, who could see the mines, telling him, ‘go left, veer right, go left again,’ or whatever.”
By now Manson’s head was spinning.
And he asked the obvious question.
“Okay. But how in the world does someone in the bunker know where the mines are if they’re buried?”
The Bushnell binoculars they were using were top quality and powerful.
“Zoom in on the hillside leading up to the pillbox. Just rest your eyes on that hillside for half a minute until your eyes adjust. Keep steady and breathe slowly and deeply so the binoculars are still.
“Focus on that hillside until something registers in your vision. Then tell me what you see.”
“You’re not pranking me are you?”
“No. I’m not pranking you. Now look and focus and tell me when you see them.”
Manson was leery but did as he was told.
Almost a full minute went by when he finally said, “Hey, wait… I see them. Several of them, in the grass. Little things that are a slightly different color than the grass. They’re hard to see, but they’re there.”
He took the binoculars away from his face and looked at Parker.
“But what, exactly, are they?”
“Anti-personnel mine markers.”
He could tell by the look on Manson’s face he’d never heard of them.
“They’re made of colored plastic and they’re in the shape of a triangle. Two long sides and a short flat side, with a peg protruding out the bottom side.
“The concept is simple. They’re placed in the ground near each of the mines. From the outside of the area, from our perspective, all we can see is the slope of the triangle. Because it’s sloped and has no right angles that we can see, it tends to blend into the ground.
“It uses the same concept as a stealth airplane whose odd shapes and lack of definitive lines help it hide from radar.
“If it was painted to match the grass exactly we wouldn’t be able to see it at all. Since it's mass produced and manufactured away from this particular place, it can come close but never match the environment perfectly. That’s why you can barely make some of them out with high powered binoculars and the patience of waiting until your vision focuses on them.”
“So how come the people in the pillbox can see them?”
“Partly because they’re much closer. But mostly because from their perspective, they don’t see the sloped side of the triangle that’s painted green to match the grass.
“They see the flat side of the triangle that’s painted white. Or yellow, depending on who manufactures the markers. They’re also painted with reflective paint so they can be easily seen at night with light-expansion goggles.”
“Where in hell did they get anti-personnel mines? I may not be the brightest guy around, but I know damn well you can’t just walk into a K-Mart somewhere and buy land mines.”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Is it possible it’s just a ruse? Something to scare people like us away? Maybe there aren’t any mines buried there at all.”
“Maybe. But I doubt it.”
“Well, why not?”
“If they wanted people to think there were buried mines they wouldn’t have used the markers to hide their locations. They’d have posted huge signs that said ‘Warning: land mines.’ They’d have wanted to make the whole world know or think they had them.
“Hiding them wouldn’t make any sense as a deterrent.”
“But how do we know for sure?”
“The only way we’ll know for sure is to step on one and see if it explodes. Do you want to volunteer?”
“I’ll pass, but thanks anyway. So what do we do about the mines?”
“I don’t know. I’m still working on it. But I’ll think of something.”
Chapter 26
As it turned out, the Dykes brothers didn’t waltz into the local K-Mart and ask to buy land mines.
If they had, they’d have been laughed at or arrested.
For land mines were illegal for civilians to possess.
But then again, so were hand grenades.
And the Dykes had those too.
Not long before the power went out some eighteen months before, a shipment of ammunition was delivered to the West Kansas City National Guard Armory. It was a routine delivery, not unlike the delivery of live ammo and dummy training rounds they received every year.
But this shipment was unique, in that they received two pallets they shouldn’t have.
Both pallets were mismarked with Kansas City’s shipping address on them.
They were supposed to go to Fort Dix, for eventual deployment to Iraq.
Oops.
The error wasn’t discovered until long after the delivery truck was gone, and it was too late to recall it.
Now this in itself wasn’t all that unique, for the United States Army screws things up all the time.
What was unique about this was that the West Kansas City Armory didn’t just get extra ammunition or dummy rounds it didn’t need. That wouldn’t have been so bad.
This particular problem was just slightly bigger.
One pallet contained hand grenades.
The other contained anti-personnel mines.
No one at the Armory was authorized access to such materials.
Not to worry. After all, the armory was a very secure place, and not just someplace where somebody could walk off with them. They’d just notify the Army courier service of the error and have them picked up.
And then the blackout happened.
The world went to hell.
The personnel who ran the armory all saw the writing on the wall. They all went home to be with their loved ones. To protect them and shield them from the chaos.
And in some cases to shoot them and put them out of their misery.
The armory?
It became, essentially, someplace where somebody could just walk in and carry out whatever they wanted.
The land mines and hand grenades, like all the weapons and ammunition, were now scattered all over Kansas. Much of it had already left the state.
The dummy rounds were left behind. They were absolutely useless.
The Dykes brothers paid a pretty penny indeed. Almost half their gold reserves, for a good number of mines and grenades.
And that was okay.
Because when one was defending their property against an assault, mines and hand grenades were even better than gold.
They were rare, they were effective and they were deadly.
The way the brothers saw it, the mines were one of the best deterrents not usually available. And since they had an opportunity to score some, they’d be crazy not to.
As Scarface and Parker watched their pillbox from afar and struggled with a solution for a way in, Jacob and Jonas Dykes were already in the bunker, playing cards with Dave’s wi
fe and daughter.
“What’s this game called again?” Jacob asked of Sarah.
“Hearts. Why?”
“Oh. I thought it might be better to rename it. I think it should be called Heartless. Because you guys aren’t giving us any breaks at all.”
“Oh, you’re just mad because you’re a sore loser,” Lindsey countered.
“And because you suck at cards,” her mom added. “Sorry to tell you that, but you really do.”
Even his own partner piled on.
“That’s the one thing my brother is consistent at,” Jonas said with a smile. “He pretty much sucks at everything he does.”
“Ha, ha. I’d argue the point, but I guess the score sheet doesn’t lie. You’re not much better, big brother.”
“I guess not. But in the grand scheme of things, losing one little game of hearts isn’t the end of the world.”
They’d gotten along famously, the group of them, since Sarah and Lindsey had joined them.
Sarah’s sister Karen had suggested it, knowing the brothers were good friends and good men, and likely not to mind. Sarah herself had been hesitant, but Karen had been right. The Dykes clan had greeted them warmly and made them feel at home.
“I appreciate your hospitality,” Sarah had told them. But I still feel bad for using up your food and fuel.”
Jason had reassured her, “Don’t be silly. We planned for several more people than we have. Some of the people who were supposed to come in here with us were too far away when the blackout hit. Others opted not to. We planned for ten years worth of food, but have enough for fourteen. We can certainly spare some.
“Besides, you guys eat like birds. And things have settled down enough on the outside to where we can go out again. We can augment our meat supplies by going out and collecting birds and rabbits. We can fish at a nearby pond.
“In fact, fall is almost here. Then winter. Have you ever had Canadian goose?”
“No. Why?”
“It’s a bit gamey. But once you adjust to it it’s good meat.”
“Pardon me for saying so,” Lindsey sarcastically interjected. “But we’re a long way from Canada.”
“I know that, Miss Smarty-Pants. But they all fly south for the winter. A lot of them wait out the cold Canadian winters by hanging out on the one acre pond a few hundred yards from here.
“Last winter we went down there and there were so many of them it was hard to see the water beneath them.
“We shot eight of them. They’re almost as big as turkeys, so it took two trips just to haul ‘em back.
“We ate ‘em for months. Ran out just before you guys got here. This winter they’ll be back, but we’ll shoot twelve of ‘em. That should last us the whole year, even with a few extra mouths to feed.
“Add that to the deer we’ll take in November and the rabbits and fish throughout the year, and we’re not gonna run out of food.
“So you put all that stuff about y’all being a burden to us out of your pretty little heads. If anything you bring a little bit more joy to the joint.”
His brother added, “The only beef I have with y’all is that you don’t let us win every once in awhile.”
The women and children did indeed fit in quite nicely with the group in the bunker. They insisted on carrying their own weight, and each had their chores they were responsible for doing.
Sarah and Lindsey missed Dave and Beth.
But they had the utmost confidence he’d find her.
Still, Sarah was well aware that Dave had no control over what transpired before he got to his daughter.
She told Lindsey, “You have to prepare yourself for the possibility that when he finds her she might not be alive.”
“I know, mom. I pray every single night and every single morning she’s okay. I have faith that God will keep her safe until dad gets there. But if it’s too late for that, we need to know. We can’t spend the rest of our lives wondering.”
It was the wondering that was the hardest part.
They’d never tell Dave, but they’d gotten used to living without him during the year he’d been stranded in San Antonio.
It wasn’t missing him necessarily that made the waiting so tortuous.
It was the not knowing whether he’d rescue Beth before something happened to her.
Or whether he’d come back alone.
Chapter 27
The last three nights traveling on Interstate 40 in Arizona were tortuous for Dave.
Just before the blackout occurred a year and a half before the Department of Transportation and the Arizona Highway Department jointly undertook a massive repaving operation.
For twenty one miles they’d had traffic moving in only one lane in each direction.
It was like a convoy in one of the trucker movies from the 1970s.
“Hey, you got your ears on, Pigpen?”
“10-4, good buddy.”
“Why don’t you pull that hay wagon in behind that tanker and join up in our convoy?”
Dave wasn’t even alive during the trucker craze.
But he’d stumbled across his dad’s old CB radio in the attic one day and asked his father exactly what it was.
It brought back a lot of pleasant memories for his father, who’d used the radio to help woo Dave’s mom. On moonlit nights they’d park on lover’s lane and chatter with other radio operators until they got bored. Then his father would spend the rest of the evening trying to talk his mother out of her jeans.
“My handle was The Maverick, he told Dave. Your mom’s was Sexy Suzy.”
“Stop right there, dad,” Dave had pleaded. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“Why not, son? It was a very fun time in my life.”
“Because any story that includes my mom being called ‘Sexy Suzy’ is a story I don’t want to hear.”
Still, Dave had been curious about the whole citizen’s band radio craze and the whole trucker thing. Curious enough to rent copies of a couple of old movies.
He’d enjoyed them but they were quickly forgotten.
Forgotten, that is, until he had to spend three long nights dodging a long line of tractor trailers, recreational vehicles and passenger cars in a single file twenty one mile-long line.
The vehicles had been creeping along at twenty miles an hour with very little space between them when they’d all rolled to their final stop.
They’d been in the outer lane, the inner lane being separated by orange cones. Asphalt on the inner lane had been chewed up by some type of machine and was loose and broken but not yet picked up with a front end loader and placed in the back of dump trucks to be hauled away.
If the EMPs had assaulted the earth on a weekend the equipment would have been neatly parked and the repair lane would have been fairly empty. Dave could merely have cruised down it to pass by all the abandoned vehicles.
But that wasn’t the case.
When the EMPs came, operations were running at full bore by a contractor who was behind schedule and trying very hard to catch up. It was a beehive of activity, with all kinds of equipment and vehicles scattered everywhere.
The highway was very similar to a slalom course, only instead of dodging orange flags Dave was dodging hundreds upon hundreds of shadowy vehicles of every type.
Each time he changed lanes he had to navigate either a two inch drop down into the repair lane or a two inch rise up to the traffic lane.
It was a pain in the ass, and it went on for a long twenty one miles.
By the time the construction zone finally came to an end, a few hundred yards east of the California line, Dave was frazzled.
Three long nights of creeping back and forth between crowded lanes at five miles an hour had brought on one of the migraine headaches he hadn’t suffered since he was a teenager.
And of course, he had nothing to treat it with.
An hour before sunrise he finally passed the sign he’d been searching for for so very long. An orange sign with black
block letters which announced the words:
END CONSTRUCTION ZONE
He felt like dancing.
Actually, no he didn’t.
He felt like sleeping.
He pulled in front of a Walmart rig and parked his vehicle, then got out and stretched his legs.
It was only then the realization came to him that none of the trucks in the long traffic jam had been touched by looters.
That was very odd. But for the previous three nights he hadn’t noticed a single trailer which had been opened up and rifled through.
And he’d passed by at least two, maybe three hundred tractor trailers.
On every interstate highway he’d driven on, trailers in or near towns were broken open and ransacked. Items not deemed essential to survival, like televisions and diapers and small appliances, were thrown unceremoniously into big piles behind the trailers.
Things which could be used, like food and water, were pilfered.
Yet this very long line of trucks, which certainly held enough provisions to feed hundreds of people for many months, was pristine.
The reason escaped Dave. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.
He crawled into the cab of the Walmart tractor and sprawled himself across the rack in the sleeper cab, so exhausted he didn’t even take off his boots.
Between his weary body and throbbing head, he was in no shape to solve any mind-boggling puzzles.
Oh, he pondered the puzzle in the few minutes it took him to drift off to sleep. But he wouldn’t solve it until he woke up again late in the day.
Chapter 28
It didn’t surprise Dave that he slept a full twelve hours.
He had been exhausted, after all.
It didn’t surprise him either that his migraine headache was gone.
For sleep is the greatest healer of man’s ills.
He was surprised at how sore his body was. And stiff too.
Then he looked closely at the rack in the sleeper. The one where he’d slept the day away.
Payback: Alone: Book 7 Page 9