by David Nees
Charlie shook his head. “That’s too long. If Stansky or Leo figure out we went here, they might attack us right away.” Charlie knew his outburst at the executions might have already triggered orders to the militia, putting all his loyal officers at risk. He struggled to clear his head.
“Chief Cook, I’m sorry, but everyone who isn’t behind Stansky is in danger, no matter where you’re staying. If you’re not on board with his agenda, for him being the absolute authority, you’re in danger. Given what Leo told you, I think you made the right move.”
The lieutenant stared across the compound for a moment. “Can your officers stay in the city? Change where they’re living and hide out? There’s lots of empty buildings around town. They can help train those dissidents you met. That group may be the fifth column of fighters we need.”
Charlie thought about it. “We can do that,” he said. If we’re very lucky, he thought. They’d have to move fast, collect their families and disperse. The technicians could help his men hide later, but at the start they just had to get gone; find unoccupied places without preparation and get into them without being seen.
“Have everyone get back into civilian gear, but keep their weapons.”
“Okay, we’ll do that.” There was no time to argue and he couldn’t think of a better plan. “But how do we get in back touch with you?”
Cameron shook his head. “Damned if I know. I’m making this up as we go along. I’ll find you.”
A thought struck Charlie. “We’ll connect through Lori Sue.”
“That’s perfect. Mark her address on my map of the city.” Cameron took him over to one of the storefronts with a long folding table in the middle and several maps laid out on it. Charlie made a careful X on the Hillsboro map and printed the address in tiny letters next to it.
Cameron reached past him, grabbed the map, folded it, and put it in his vest pocket. Then he spoke quietly. “There’s one other pressing issue. Maybe you can help with it. We have to raid Stansky’s arms cache. We have to try to get any mortars and other heavy weapons we can find. Not only could they take us out, they could do a lot of damage to the city. Stansky may not care about that, but we don’t want to defeat him only to have the town in ruins.”
Just then Gibbs came through the door. “We won’t have Roper’s group packed up before sunset. Not if we do it right.”
Cameron sighed. “All right. Keep them under guard. The delay won’t hurt. We’re going to pack the rest of the platoon as well. Everything. The escort is going to be all of us. I want to keep an eye on Roper until we’re well away from town. I don’t want him circling back and spilling our plans to Stansky.”
Gibbs took the news in stride. “That’s going to take an extra day.”
“Frank and Joe will see we’re prepping to leave. They’ll wait.” Cameron gestured for both Charlie and Gibbs to sit down. “We have to figure out how to deal with the weapons Joe has. We have to get as many of the larger weapons out of his hands as possible. We’ll also need rifles to arm the civilians, and ammunition…as much as we can take.”
“Before or after we leave?”
“After we’re out of here.”
Gibbs stared thoughtfully at the desk. “That’s tight. I can leave a small team behind. Very small. Too small for a real fight.” He turned to Charlie. “Maybe we can add in some of your police. If they could help get us in quiet, that’s even better.”
Charlie nodded his head. “I know where the weapons are stored. And you’re right, we can’t assault the building, but if we can get in quietly and have a truck to haul the arms away, we can do it. How many do you want?”
“Let’s talk to your people,” Gibbs said.
Sergeant Gibbs looked levelly at Charlie’s wide-eyed group. “If we can do it as a burglary, I think we can spare Specialist Wilkes and one other soldier. The advantage of Wilkes is that he knows some of the militia. He could get up close to them. He could pretend that he wants to stay in town, not leave with the squad, and needs to buy a weapon.”
“I can work that game with him,” Hank Ames said. Charlie was surprised. Hank hadn’t seemed to be a big risk taker. But he was grinning. “I know a lot of those militia guys. They probably think I’m on Stansky’s side. I can say I’m helping this guy out, since he wants to desert from the army. I’ll say he gave me a bottle of whiskey to introduce him to someone who can get him a weapon. The guards get something nice too. So he’ll have to bring a bottle of booze or something. If we can get close, we can take them down.”
Gibbs smiled. “Captain Roper’s hoard contains a few likely possibilities.”
He turned toward Charlie, his smile fading. “Can he pull this off?” he asked while his expression meant, Can we trust him?
Charlie looked back. “Positive.”
“It’s a plan,” Lieutenant Cameron said. “Sergeant, go find Wilkes and see if he’ll volunteer. Charlie, pick another officer to go along. We’ll send four total.”
Chapter 38
___________________________________
T wo days after he had gotten back from visiting the clans in the north, Jason was cleaning his M110 sniper rifle at the kitchen table, always to Anne’s annoyance. She and Sarah were out visiting Claire Nolan, a widow whose husband had died defending the valley. Before she left, she had given strict instructions to Jason to cover the table with a generous cloth and had made him promise to clean up his mess afterward. Though he had been engrossed in the work, he saw a flicker of movement out of the kitchen window and instantly looked up to see the clansmen from up north emerge silently from the tree line and cross the open front yard.
He went out to meet them. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was hot. Jason invited the men up to the porch, which was partially shaded and protected from the day’s heat. The men crowded up on the porch, some of them sitting on the floor and the steps while Clayton and a few others took a seat at the table.
Catherine was home, and she got some venison jerky and dried apples out of the pantry. She and Jason carried out three bowlfuls to pass among the men. After making sure the men all had something to eat, he sat down at the table with Clayton.
“We gonna set up at the bridge?” Clayton asked.
“It’s the best place,” Jason replied.
Catherine stepped out to join the conversation. “They’ve seen the bridge, they’ve heard the story. Won’t they know how dangerous the bridge and the gorge are for them? I’m wondering if they won’t try to find another way in.”
“She be right,” Clayton said with a nod.
“I can’t say she’s not,” Jason said ruefully. “And speaking of the visit, that guy Leo was quiet, but I get the feeling that he’s smarter than he looks. I’ll bet he took a really good look at everything. We now know he’s the one who runs the militia for Joe. He’s the general.” He rubbed his temples. “But the problem for him is he still doesn’t have an alternative. There’s no other way in.”
“They’s other ways in.” Clayton pointed in the direction of the afternoon sun, towards the far side of the valley. “Over the west ridge they’s a bark road that goes up and over. See that saddle?” Clayton pointed to the western ridge “Not very deep, but the road goes over the ridge there.”
“How do you know that?” Jason asked.
“We know these woods.”
Catherine nodded. “He’s right. I hiked part of that before the EMP attack and I came across an old road.”
Jason frowned. “Can you get a vehicle over the road? Many of them aren’t passable.”
“Four-wheel drive could make it,” Clayton said.
“Damn.” Jason thought for a moment. “Would it be on a map?”
“Don’t know about any maps,” Clayton responded.
Jason closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head. “We don’t have enough forces to split the group. We’ve got to assume they probably don’t know about that road. Hell, I didn’t. We have to go with the bridge. They know the bridge is a dangerous place, so they’ll
try to avoid it and the road completely—they’ll try to cross the river and climb the ridge through the trees. That technique almost worked in the last battle.”
Catherine had a pensive look on her face. “If you’re wrong, the whole valley will be wide open. That endangers Tom, Betty, Claire, John and his wife and kid. They’re all exposed.”
“What’s the alternative?”
She was silent for a moment. Jason watched her stare over the valley. When she answered, her voice was calm and cool. With a pang of regret he realized it was not the voice of a teenager; that part of her life was now gone.
“I don’t like it, but I don’t have a solution. How long do you think we’ve got before they get here?”
“No way to know. We figure Stansky’s going to push Roper into action this week, and after the army’s gone he’ll attack pretty quick. It may come next week, if not earlier.”
Catherine shook her head. “What a crappy situation,” she said quietly.
“It is what it is. Ain’t nothing to do about it.” Clayton said. There was a note of stoic acceptance in his voice, but beneath it something deadly.
Charlie’s loyal officers and their families made their way across Hillsboro. They moved deliberately along many different streets that diverged widely from each other, angling wide of their eventual destination before changing course, or passing it entirely and then working back toward it. Some walked with partners and families, some walked alone. They did not hurry, despite the tension.
The return of the police vehicles to the headquarters lot had gone unobserved. The corrupt officers they had left behind would not immediately discover that the weapons were missing. The irregularity of the extraction of the children from the school wouldn’t be reported immediately, and only later would it be connected to the disappearance of Charlie and his loyal officers. Charlie figured there would be a delay of a day at least before any special word went out.
The spouses and families of the officers were afraid, but they handled the trip better than Charlie expected. Within the bags they carried were the firearms collected from headquarters. All the absconding members of the force had changed into civilian clothing.
And so Charlie’s loyal contingent made its way into the neglected south side of the city, along streets lined with more and more uninhabited houses and abandoned structures, and came at last to the neighborhood around Lori Sue’s apartment. Each new arrival was beckoned to from doorways and alleys, brief instructions were passed on, and as the afternoon went on the people Charlie could trust vanished from sight.
Charlie and Mary took the empty apartment next to Lori Sue’s. Two of his people moved into rooms in the same building. Hurried consultation with a surprised and irate Lori Sue had gotten him suggestions about places for his people in the neighboring blocks. She had warned him that she was only telling him where she hadn’t noticed any sign of life, that she hadn’t actually searched the buildings. It didn’t matter; it was all he had.
He and Mary had brought along their supply of extra food. He was happily surprised to find that all of his people had been saving some of the extra food he had surreptitiously been diverting to them and had brought at least some of those reserves with them. There would be no immediate problem with hunger, and he hoped that between Billy and the insurgents they would have at least a somewhat steady food supply. His officers could not show up at the food centers any more.
Lori Sue told Charlie, “You all got to be careful coming and going. You tell everybody. If the militia sees lots of activity here, they’ll come snoopin’ around. We don’t need that. And no noise. None. ‘Specially the kids. You tell ‘em, you hear me?”
Charlie nodded dutifully. Lori Sue was highly opinionated, and, in this case, her opinion was correct. Discretion was the rule of the day.
Although he could not see very far ahead, he knew what his next step had to be.
Charlie waited till dusk and then set out again. He dared not take a direct route to the generator and wire factory; that was too risky. So he set out on a circuitous path. After reaching the factory, it took him a half hour of wandering around near the building before he connected with one of the conspiracy’s lookouts. Going there unannounced was dangerous, but he had no choice. Events were moving fast and he had to make contact and bring them up to speed.
He was led blindfolded to another secret room to talk with the leaders. From the sound of their voices, they seemed both frightened and encouraged by the news he gave them.
When the discussion finally quieted and sorted itself out, the conspirators all agreed they would stay where they were and keep on working, but now more intensely, abandoning their slowdown. Stansky would think the executions had achieved the effect he wanted. For a while, he would not watch them so closely.
Charlie told them he would get weapons to them. He didn’t elaborate as to how. He told them it was better to keep information compartmentalized while things were so dangerous. He didn’t know where the technicians lived, and they didn’t know where he lived. It was a good situation to maintain, given that Charlie and his group were about to be hunted.
With no more information to impart, Charlie begged off staying longer. The group could discuss their strategies without him. He was exhausted from the day’s events and just wanted to get back to Mary.
He was old, he acknowledged to himself as he was led back out into the streets and his blindfold removed. This was a young person’s game he was playing. But you have to play the cards you’re dealt, isn’t that what Frank said? Charlie had picked his side—his cards—and now he needed to play them out as best he could.
He made his way carefully back through the dark streets, ever watchful of being spotted by a patrol. He felt on edge, exhausted after the long stressful day. When he got back to the apartment, he lay down next to his wife and fell fast asleep.
Before dawn, Charlie was up with Hank Ames and Les Hammond, heading to the army camp. They were in uniform in case they were seen by any militia. They concentrated on moving normally, but they took a roundabout path that steered clear of downtown. With their precautions, they were able to reach the platoon headquarters undetected. The tents were being taken down, and supplies and gear were stacked neatly on the pavement, categorized and ready for loading. Men were moving in and out of storerooms and supply tents, adding to the piles in the parking lot.
Tommy Wilkes and another soldier were waiting for them in one of the storefront offices. Wilkes introduced his companion as Specialist Terry Jackson.
Wilkes and Jackson were wearing T-shirts and blue jeans. Charlie could see a sheath knife in Wilkes’ belt, and he spotted the tell-tale bulge of a pistol stuffed into his jeans. Jackson had his service rifle and magazine packs.
They went over the plan again, but it was a brief conversation. The job was set for the evening of the next day. Hammond would bring the police truck and wait near the facility for the signal that entry had been secured. Everything else was an ambitious blank. While Hank knew the general layout of the building, where the different types of weapons were kept was another matter. There was no way to know how many men would be on guard either, inside or out. The raid would have to be played out as the action dictated.
With the morning not yet old, they slipped out into the city. The four that were going on the mission would find their own place to hide through the next thirty-six hours. The platoon would pull out of town the next morning, apparently with all its soldiers, leaving an innocently empty compound. Two alleys away from the base, Charlie shook hands with each of the four. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
Chapter 39
___________________________________
T he army’s packing up,” Frank stood in the doorway to Joe’s office. Leo was sitting inside. “They should be out of here by tomorrow. Next day at the latest.”
“I heard,” Joe told him. “Looks like you were successful.”
“Sometimes it takes a politician to get things don
e, to convince people where their best interests lie,” Frank replied. He looked proud of himself as he took the seat next to Leo. He tipped his head at Joe. “You should remember that when the federal government shows up. We’ll need to do a lot of convincing to make them see they should work with us.”
Joe smiled. “So that’s the plan? Get them to work with us?”
“Better that than replacing us…or us going to war with them. When that day comes, we want to be put in charge by the feds, just like the army let us remain in charge. We need to be the solid, helpful structure in place. Then we can keep this operation going.” Frank spread his arms out as if covering the town.
Joe’s smile broadened. Frank never stopped lobbying for putting himself into every deal. Joe knew that Frank saw his future as being the middleman between Joe and whoever showed up.
“What’s up with Charlie?” Leo asked Frank. “You seen him since he put up that show at the execution?”
Frank shook his head. “I haven’t seen him. I can check on him, but from the line he took with you at the execution, I don’t think he’s on board.”
“That’s no secret. Leo told me what went on.” Joe leaned towards Frank. “You know anything else?”
“He talked to me in the arena. I didn’t think too much of it when it happened. I thought he was in shock from the announcement, running his mouth…but now I guess it was pretty clear. He tried to convince me that we should take a stand against you.”
“He did? And what the hell did you say?”
“I told him that the valley had brought this trouble on themselves and I wasn’t going to let them interfere with the town’s progress.”
“So, he tried to recruit you to double-cross me?” Joe said. His anger began to rise. “I’ll deal with him later. I want to get ready for this raid. We got everyone keeping their heads down here in town, now it’s time to take care of the valley.”