It had taken us two days to blow out the front of the garage to accommodate the truck’s height. We raised the headers and elevated the garage door four feet. We had an enclosed space to make more modifications—and hide the truck.
“Once we finish with the changes, this here vehicle,” Weasel emphasized his point by smacking the truck with a crow bar, “is gonna serve three functions. First thing it’s gonna be is our new armory. When we finish, we’ll take most of the guns and ammo we got in the basement armory and store them in here. If we ever need to leave in a hurry, then we don’t leave our defenses behind.”
“And,” I added, “we don’t leave any loot behind for the clans. I’d hate to add what’s downstairs to what they already have. When we get it loaded, we park it inside the garage. It’s close to the house, ready to go.”
“What’s its next function?” Sarah asked.
“Between the four of us, in the next few days we’re gonna make this thing as close to impregnable as possible.”
“Good word,” Sarah commented.
“Been working on vocabulary on the computer,” Weasel explained. “‘Impregnable’ means ‘cannot be overcome by force.’ That’s what this vehicle will be when we’re done. Function number two will be a war wagon. We can use it for offense or defense. The Babe’s gotta be made to disappear. This may be the way.”
“And the third?” I asked.
“Tell ‘em, Stevie,” Weasel said.
“It’s another back door,” Stevie replied. “Between the eight tunnel exits and the truck, we’re up to nine escape routes.”
Weasel continued with the lecture. “We cut out a bunch of sheets from rail road freight cars for extra armor. Measured first and cut ‘em all to pattern.” He walked us over to where we could see them laying flat on the truck bed. “You can see a bunch of dents in ‘em where me and Stevie did a little target practice. They stop everything we pump at ‘em. Even a .44 mags. Also 10 mm semis. Haven’t tried a 50 cal cuz we don’t got one. If we run into trouble, don’t figure to see anything heavier’n 44’s or 10mm from the clans. I know where to find a 50 cal, but it’s not in an easy in and out area.”
“These steel panels look awfully damn heavy,” I said, “are we going to be able to move them into place?”
“We loaded ‘em with a winch that operates from the cab,” he answered. “But none of ‘em are really that big. It can’t get too heavy, or else we’re gonna have a problem with the truck. That’s why I cut off parts of the bed and moved ‘em around. Gonna use about half of what we cut off, too. But a lot of it ain’t the right size for what I got in mind. That’s why we made these custom welds.”
“And keep this in mind,” Stevie added. “This truck was designed to pull a full load of dirt or stone in the bed. That’s several tons. A little extra weight on the armor isn’t going to bother its performance a bit.”
Weasel motioned Stevie over to his side. “The boy here knows the whole plan. Run through it for ‘em, Stevie.”
Stevie stepped away from us and moved to the front of the truck. I could see him trying to hide his smile. This was a serious responsibility that Weasel had given him. But at the same time he was overjoyed at his new status. He called Sarah and me over to the cab area and began to explain our tasks for the next two days.
“We’re gonna armor plate parts of the doors and the side windows in case there’s a clan attack. The window armor will be removable so we can see good when everything is running smooth.” Stevie moved to the front of the truck and knelt down by the wheel. “Now these tires are also vulnerable to bullets, so we’re gonna try to protect them as much as we can with more armor. You two got any questions?”
“Yes, Stevie,” said Sarah. “How are we going to attach this armor to the truck?”
“Some of it will be welded,” he replied. “Me and Weasel will do that. When we can get a firm base for bolts, we’re gonna bolt them on. That way the armor is removable in case we want to make the truck lighter for work in safe zones. You and Mac will be doing mostly holding in place and carrying work. Also all of us are gonna paint this baby in camouflage colors when we’re done with the modifications.
“Weasel figured we could use some spot lights. We’re going to mount halogen lamps on the roof and hood and then wire it into the battery. We’ll do the mounting and Weasel will do the wiring. We also gotta put together a tool box, first aid kit and some food and water.”
“How long do you figure this will take?” I asked.
“Me and Weasel figure three nine hour days plus an extra hour at the end of each day for driving practice,” he answered. “Starting now.”
And so we started, Sarah and I were mules for the master craftsmen. It took us two days to finish—including the new paint job. On the third we rested.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SEPTEMBER 2056
The first time one of Weasel’s land mines was triggered, we ended up having steak for dinner. One of the cows from remote pasture had stumbled upon a weakness in the fence and had gone grazing in one of the several strips that had been mined. From the looks of her tracks, she had been out there for several hours, munching away at the high grass, oblivious in that special cow stupidity of the destruction that lay beneath her feet. At one of her stops, she had managed to trim the grass from the top of a mine without disturbing the device.
But she ultimately stepped on one with a front hoof. The resulting blast had killed her instantly, shredding her front legs and big head and eliminating the need for deer and varmint hunting for an entire month.
Weasel had found the mines in an armory over in Rock Falls, north and west of old O’Hare Airport. They were late 20th models, not the ones from Viet Nam, but the updated versions of the Claymore used in the middle east and South America by American troops in the 90’s.
We didn’t figure that the blast that awoke us at the deepest part of a warm September night was another cow. It never paid to think an unusual event was a random, harmless happenstance. Always interpret surprises as harbingers of doom—Rule Thirteen in the Book of Weasel.
Like pre-collapse firemen, we all jumped into our roles when the shuddering blast of the claymore awoke us. Dressing quickly, making sure the bottom layer was body armor, all of us donned our headsets, courtesy of I Spy, You Spy, and grabbed our weapons. Weasel headed straight up to the observation post on the roof.
No lights were switched on in the house to aid us in our tasks. We had done the drill blindfolded many times. All the routes had been mapped and memorized, locked in our brains. But since Weasel had come up with the Night Vision Goggles from the SWAT armory over in the city, we used the NVG’s to navigate to our posts.
Merlin, back again for another visit and technology fix, stumbled out of his room, the sweet scent of stale marijuana smoke accompanying him like bad cologne.
“Mac, you there. Where’s the lights? You hear that, Mac?” he asked excitedly. “Something blew up out there. Shit, man, we under attack?”
“Not sure yet,” I replied, sticking a set of NVG’s on his head. “You’re with me.”
Duke, excited by the change in routine, sensing the adrenaline rush all of us were transmitting, followed me and Merlin downstairs. I let him out the front door to patrol the inside the barbed wire barrier. If there was something inside our walls that didn’t belong, he would let us know.
Sarah and Stevie split up and headed front and back, second floor to check the outside, peering through the gun slots in the blackout shutters, while I did the same for both sides of the house, running through the long hallway that traversed the second floor.
“Back clear,” Stevie’s voice said in my headset.
“I got movement in the front,” Sarah said.
“I got ‘em,” Weasel drawled from the cupola on the roof. “Three standin’ still as dogs on point and one chile releno on the ground. What about you, Mac?”
“Clear on the sides,” I said. “Nobody inside the walls according to Duke.
What’s your reading, Weasel?”
“I see ‘em as clan scouts, not indies,” he said. “Too well armed for indies. Each one’s got a rifle and a couple of pistols. The three still standing are either black or got camouflage paint on for night work. Guy on the ground isn’t moving. I’m taking them out. There may be more out there. Don’t want to mess with these guys if they got friends coming.”
“Shit.” It was Sarah’s voice. We all heard it over the headsets Each of us was open to everything that was said. And each of us knew what she was thinking: They’re just standing there in the dark. How can you kill them?
“The fuck you think they came here for, Sarah?” Weasel replied, not bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. “To get the name of a good real estate agent? They’re lookin’ for Mac and Duke.”
“I know. I know,” she replied. “It’s gotta be done. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Don’t care a whole lot for it myself,” came Weasel’s reply through all of our headsets. There was a sadness in his voice. But it wasn’t for the men in our mine field. It was for the fact that Sarah hadn’t understood this didn’t come easy to him either.
He had a Mauser SP 66 sniper rifle up there with him. It was there all the time, along with a HK 81 assault rifle and a Heckler & Koch HK21A1 GP belt fed machine gun. It was one of the few available machine guns designed to be operated by one man. Every weapon in Weasel’s nest fired the 7.62 mm rounds. The Mauser sniper rifle had a flash suppressor and scopes for both day and night.
I had practiced with it at night and knew that with the Varo image intensifying scope, operating on the same available light principle as our night vision goggles, Weasel could see the interlopers well enough to count the lashes on their eyes. All of us were good shots, but he and Stevie were the best, consistently nailing targets 400 to 500 meters in distance. The clan scouts were under 100 meters away.
“Hold it,” I said. “We should talk to one of them.”
“Gotcha,” came his reply. Two shots followed, less than a second between them. “It’s done. Third guy’s still standing.”
I left the house and went through the tunnel under the barbed wire. I yelled at the clan soldier. “The sniper’s still got you in his sights. You’re surrounded by mines. If you don’t move, you’ll live. We’ll come get you in the morning.” I couldn’t tell him to toss his weapons away for fear they would trigger another blast from one of the mines.
I went back behind the barrier, whistled for Duke, returned to the house. Then I gathered up Merlin, heading up to Weasel’s post in the cupola where we replaced him at the spot in front of the HK machine gun with Merlin. “If that guy moves,” I instructed Merlin, “just point and pull the trigger. Follow the bullet tracks right up to him.”
“No problem, man,” Merlin replied, stroking the gun. “I can do this. Guy moves, I turn him into compost. Right?”
“We’ll be back at daylight,” Weasel said. “You’re safe here.”
“I am not frightened,” Merlin replied, as if rehearsing the words for a mantra. “You leaving Duke here?”
“He’s coming with us,” I said.
“No problem,” Merlin replied. “Wish I had a joint. Left ‘em in my room.”
• • • •
Weasel, Stevie, Sarah and I exited the basement, each from a different tunnel. It took about five minutes to clear the booby traps and then all of us were out, beyond the fences and pastures, checking the night environment for signs of more intruders. Duke, making his own decision, had chosen to be with Stevie. None of us knew his criteria. Sarah figured some kind of telepathic sense guided his decisions at such times. Within an hour, all of us had returned safely. No other clan soldiers were outside our walls.
“No sign of any backup for this group,” Weasel said. “Definitely a scouting party.”
Back in the basement, near time for the sun to rise, Weasel inspected our group and said to Sarah, “I’m not so sure about that dog telepathy stuff. Everybody looks pretty healthy. Nothing out there to harm us tonight.”
She looked up at him, ignoring his attempt to start one of their friendly arguments. “I owe you an apology,” she said. “I disrespected you tonight. It was very narrow of me to think I’m the only one here who abhors killing. It’s not good for any of us to be so internally focused. That’s one of the most important things I’ve learned from you, Weasel. You care for us more than you do for yourself. Will you forgive me?”
Uncomfortable as ever with a show of emotion, Weasel shuffled his feet and gazed at the floor. “I can’t imagine anything you’d do that I wouldn’t forgive you for, Sarah,” he said to his feet.
“Maybe,” Sarah said, changing the subject and smiling as she reached out and gently squeezed his cheek, “Stevie would have befallen some kind of harm if Duke hadn’t been there. Stepped in a hole, got bitten by a snake. Something like that. Maybe Duke’s presence stopped that event.” Sarah turned toward Stevie. “What do you think, Stevie?”
He looked over at me and gave me a sly little smile. “Well, I did mostly follow Duke’s lead. He might have known something I wasn’t aware of.”
“There,” Sarah said. “There you go. Even Stevie says its possible.”
“Shit,” Weasel scoffed, happy to be back on safe conversational ground, “that ain’t fair. Sayin’ something might have happened that didn’t happen. You can’t prove that.”
“And you can prove otherwise? That such an event wasn’t a possibility?”
“You’re beginning to piss me off,” Weasel said, smiling.
“I know,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite hobbies.”
• • • •
“Except piss and sit down, guy didn’t move an inch. Guess his legs couldn’t hold him up any more.” Merlin was pleased with himself when we came up to tell him his turn behind the machine gun was over. “Your life always like this, man?” he said to no one in particular. “It’s a fucking trip. Every time I been here there’s some spectacular shit going down. Vids, goddam truck in the garage, building shit…Now this attack. I gotta go get me a joint. Chill out a bit.”
“Merlin,” I said, “this wasn’t an attack. They stumbled upon the mines by accident, sniffing around. Probably looking for me, but definitely not an assault on the compound. If you’re around when that happens, there will be no doubt as to what’s going down.”
The sun was fully risen when the five of us stepped out of the house to bring in our prisoner. He was sitting, knees up, arms across them, perfectly still. “Stand up,” I hollered at the man from the porch. “I’m gonna walk you in. Take off all your clothes first. Shoes too.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” he yelled back.
“Let’s go have breakfast,” I suggested. “He’ll wait.”
When we came back an hour later, satisfied with the coffee and biscuits and Merlin’s vegetable and cheese omelets, the man was in the same spot, butt naked, his clothes and weapons in a pile beneath his feet. He looked completely ridiculous, big bellied, bow-legged, barrel-chested, pasty pale white man with a huge round black camouflage face. Looked like a bowling ball on a snowman.
• • • •
“Ooo eeee,” said the man, completely in awe, totally oblivious of his nakedness or the fact that he was our prisoner. He was looking at me the way a hungry man does a nice fat hen turkey. We were in the kitchen.
“Big man. Tall. Well-armed. Plus a tan dog. Jackpot. This close to the fucking prize. I found McCall.” He did a little jig, dancing in place, mindless of his arm and leg manacles. “Nail your ass and every fuckin’ slit in the state’ll lay down for me. Goddam. I’m fucking rich. Feels good to be so close.”
“You want I should surrender now or later?” I asked, giving his shoulder a shove. Without his arms for balance, he found himself abruptly seated on the floor. “Scoot into that corner,” I instructed. “And shut the fuck up. We don’t want to hear you babble.”
“He’s nuts,” Stevie said, lookin
g at the black-faced man sitting in a corner of our kitchen.
“Not nuts,” said Merlin. “High. Look at his eyes. Check his clothes. That’s where it is. Must have been snorting all night. Bad Boy, I’d guess. Makes you feel invincible.”
The man’s head whirled on Merlin and he popped to his feet like a jack-in-the-box. “Shut up you little fuckin’ scrote,” he snarled. “I know who you are. Seen you pokin’ around our camp, seen you out tradin’ for your weed and those fuckin’ cassettes. You’re dead too, little man. We’re comin’ after all of you.”
Sarah laughed. “Al Jolson on acid,” she said. “Let’s go clean the guns. He’s no threat to us.”
His fevered eyes turned to Sarah. “McCall’s cunt, huh?” he said. “Nice hair bitch. Seen all kinds of colors. Blue, green, pink too, but never red like that. Your pussy that same color. Let me see, baby. Show me that snatch. We can make a big score with red pussy hair. Sell it ‘til it dries…ooofff.”
Stevie buried his fist in the man’s solar plexus driving the wind from his lungs. The soldier sat straight down again and rolled into a fetal position, his mouth working soundlessly, hands clenching spasmodically behind his back.
“Somebody tie him up,” Weasel said. “We gonna go clean those guns like Sarah suggested.”
“One of us should stay and watch him,” Merlin said.
“Duke,” Stevie said, loud enough for our prisoner to hear. “If the man moves an inch, tear him up.”
As we left the room, commanding Duke to guard the Messenger, I put my arm around Stevie’s shoulders. “Beat me to the punch, young man,” I told him. “Thanks.”
He was embarrassed by what the man who didn’t know he was a prisoner had said about Sarah. “Needed to be shut up,” he replied. “Lost it for a second. Sorry.”
“They have an interesting outlook on women,” Sarah said.
“Women are property to the clans,” Merlin replied. “The good ones are very valuable. But they have no rights, no say in the running of things.”
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