by Jayne, Chris
Too often over the past few days, Lori had been just too distracted by their situation to engage the children in what was around them. She had been the sort of mother to point out every interesting bird or unusual plant they encountered; now, they crossed one of the biggest, most spectacular rivers in the United States and she didn’t even bother to mention it. Yet another change to chalk up to Raoul Saldata.
“Can we go see it?” asked Grace.
“Well, I’m going to cook us some lunch. Let me look at the map. Maybe if it’s not too far you can walk over and see it while I’m cooking.”
As she said it, though, the practical side of her kicked in to argue: what was she thinking of? She should do nothing but get back on the road. Everyone, including, she noted cynically, Sasha who had finally appeared to make a selection, had had a chance to relieve themselves; now was not the time to be sightseeing or cooking. She should get back on the road, buy fast food at the next town, and be to Lou and Roger’s in two hours.
“Can we, Mommy?”
Lori hesitated, knowing she should say no, but not wanting to disappoint Grace, who finally seemed engaged in what was going on around them and to feel well enough to want to get some exercise. She walked to the gate of the dog run and opened it, letting herself out and the two children and Simone in. “Stay here with Sasha until I get back. Then we’ll decide.”
Lori walked away from the dog run without a backward glance.
Chapter 39
Deacon
Monday
11:15 AM Mountain Time
Hobson, Montana
* * *
“Damn it,” Roger Hale swore, rolling his eyes.
Deacon Hale looked at his brother from where he was leaned over the road atlas spread open to Montana on the kitchen table. “What?”
“Call dropped.” He rested the phone back on the cradle and walked back into the kitchen.
“Fill me in. I only heard half the conversation.”
“Three people, small gray SUV. Two men, one woman, who are now ahead of Lori.” Roger looked at the map and touched a place where Montana Highway 191 went north at a town called Big Timber. “Probably by now, they’re right about here. About 120 miles away. The woman and Lori saw each other in the restroom, but Lori says she’s sure she wasn’t recognized. Apparently, she’s changed her appearance significantly. The car is a small SUV. Something like a Toyota 4Runner. Montana plates.”
Roger walked back into the living room and picked the phone up again, but Deacon interrupted. “Before you call her back, give me two minutes.” Roger put the phone back in its cradle and came back into the kitchen to look at the map. “And Lori’s here?” Deacon touched a spot on the map about 60 miles west of Billings where a rest area was indicated along Interstate 90. “Graystone Rest Area?”
“Yeah. Has to be.” Roger continued to study the map. “And if you get out of here in - let’s say fifteen minutes - somewhere right here,” he touched the map, “between Judith Gap and Harlowton, you might run into them on the road.” The brothers’ eyes met, full of the implications of that statement.
The silence grew oppressive. “Do you want me to try to take them?” Deacon asked. “What if you came with me? We’ve got a huge advantage here. We have warning, and these asshats don’t know it.”
Roger shook his head slowly. “Montana plates, small SUV, gray? That’s every other car around here. We’d have to see the car in the oncoming lane, decide it’s the right one, then turn around and chase the vehicle down. What if we’re wrong? Plus, there’s more than one way to get here from the interstate. 191 is the best way, but it’s not the only way. You’re the guy that does operations like this for a living, but I think without being sure of the car, it’s too risky.”
Deacon’s jaw tightened. As much as he would like to act and act quickly, he knew his brother was right. There were too many variables. And just because Lori only saw one car didn’t make it so. What if there were two vehicles, three occupants each? Then they’d be going up against six, not three, with no warning. “And you’re absolutely sure we shouldn’t call the cops?”
Roger raked his hand through his hair. “Half the cops in Fergus County live at Bowenville, and Willie Bowen wants to get rid of me. We can’t trust a single one of locals. The state boys? They’re probably fine, but I don’t know any of them. What would I tell them?” Roger paused, shaking his head. “There might be a car on 191 that might have three people in it that might be coming to my house to hurt my sister-in-law who’s actually not here yet?” he asked facetiously. “I’d sound like an idiot. We get her here, we find out what’s really going on, and then we make some phone calls.”
Deacon looked at the map again. “So, no matter how fast they drive, they’re two hours away, right?”
“If you go 100 miles an hour, you’d get here faster, but I’d think a speeding ticket would be the last kind of attention they’d want. On 191, there are definitely stretches where 55 is about as fast as you could go and there are a couple towns where you have to slow down to 30. Yeah, two hours minimum.”
Deacon nodded, confident. He had a plan. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You call Louise and tell her not to come home. Check into a motel in Lewiston after they leave the hospital. Meanwhile, you grab the kids, drive them into Lewiston, take them to Louise. That way we know they’re all safe. Then you come back here.”
“And I’m a sitting duck?”
“No. Whatever is going on, it’s Lori they want. They’re not going to show themselves until they see her. Remember, they don’t know we’ve gotten warning and they don’t even know for sure she’s here.”
“Which she’s not,” Roger interjected slowly. “They’re just guessing.”
“Exactly. They’ll find a place where they can watch the house, or,” Deacon thought for a second. “Lori said there’s a woman?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll send the woman to the door on some premise. Her car broke down. Do the Smiths live here? Something. But until they see Lori, they’re not going to move.”
“All right. It’s a plan. I’ll get the kids ready.” Roger paused, then sighed, shoulders slumping. “It’s a plan that’s not going to work.”
“Why not?”
“Because we only have my truck. All the kids won’t fit. And even if I crammed them in and left this second, a round trip to Lewiston is almost an hour. Which means you wouldn’t be able to leave until I get back.” He paused, then held a hand up. “Hold on. Sandy’s SUV is here. I wonder if there’s any chance in hell she left the keys.”
Roger sprinted out of the house, but in only a minute or so he was back, shaking his head. “I even checked the wheel wells to see if she has a hide a key. Nothing.”
“God damn it,” Deacon cursed, then reconsidered the plan. “How about this? Louise has her cell phone, right?” Roger nodded. “You call Louise and tell her to come home right now and pick the kids up. Even if she has to leave Sandy at the hospital alone. That way I can leave.”
Roger interrupted his brother, his face going totally still. “Funny Lori hasn’t called back.”
In a moment, the world shifted.
Stupid, stupid, STUPID! Deacon’s brain screamed and from his brother’s face he could tell that Roger had simultaneously come to exactly the same conclusions. What if their glib assumption that the group stalking Lori had no reason to come back to the rest area was totally logical - and completely wrong? What if the woman in the restroom had realized who Lori was? “Oh shit,” he whispered.
Roger hurried into the living room, grabbing for the phone. He brought it to his ear and then looked back into the kitchen at Deacon. “What the hell? Is the power out?”
Deacon reached over and opened the refrigerator; it was dark. To verify, he stepped over to the kitchen sink and flipped a light switch. Again, nothing. “Probably just a breaker.”
Roger ignored him and rushed into the small house’s front room and flipped a lamp switch: noth
ing. “It’s not a breaker,” he snapped. He came back into the kitchen and picked the phone up again, listened intently.
The look on his brother’s face caused Deacon to pause. “What’s wrong? Why is it not a breaker?”
“Because this is a hardline phone. Even if the power goes out, I should have a dial tone.”
Deacon fished his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. The screen was completely black. His brain was moving in slow motion. This meant something, he knew it did, but for the life of him he couldn’t put it together. He held his hand out and showed the black screen to his brother. “It’s dead.”
Roger ran out of the house to where his truck was parked in the driveway fronting the small farmhouse and jumped into the driver’s seat. Deacon followed only a few steps behind him. By the time Deacon reached Roger’s side, he had the key in the ignition. As Deacon listened, the car tried to start again and again, the motor chugging but never turning over.
Finally, Roger stopped. “Need to save the battery,” he muttered.
“What is it?”
Roger looked up at his brother, his eyes dark with fear. “Didn’t they train you for this?” The four children had stopped their play and had moved closer to the two men, somehow sensing that something bad was happening.
“For what?” Deacon asked, but suddenly it clicked in his brain and he knew the answer. “Oh Jesus,” he breathed. “EMP?” His special ops training had included information on dozens of scenarios, and this was one that had been covered numerous times. “Are you suggesting an EMP? That’s absurd. That’s crazy. That’s…”
Deacon could see the muscles in his brother’s throat working hard. “Power’s out. Your cell’s fried. The dial tone on a hardline phone gone and the car’s starter works but the fuel ignition doesn’t? What else could it be?”
Deacon wanted to snap “lots of things” but he didn’t, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else. EMP. Electromagnetic pulse. A short burst of electromagnetic energy capable of disruption of anything that contained a semi-conductor. They could be caused from natural sources like a solar flare, or man-made sources like a nuclear bomb detonated high in the atmosphere. Depending on whom you talked to, a man-made EMP, unleashed as a weapon, could cause anything from minor disruption to a total return of an entire society to the stone age.
Deacon and Roger Hale looked at each other, both quiet, both considering the implications of what Roger had suggested. Suddenly, Roger’s eyes focused on something in the sky behind Deacon and Deacon turned to see what his brother was watching.
A plane was passing in the distance. Deacon, on the fly, tried to estimate, and he put it at roughly 8,000 feet and maybe ten miles away. He was no pilot, but 8,000 feet was way too low for a big jet, and even without a solid perspective, Deacon could see it was losing altitude, quickly. Neither man could speak as they watched, horrified. Finally, after thirty terrible seconds, the plane having lost altitude the entire time, it passed out of view behind a mountain.
“Did that plane just crash?” Roger whispered, not wanting the children to hear.
“I think so,” Deacon responded. Deacon had seen a lot in his life, things he would never have wanted to describe to anyone, but he’d never seen a plane crash. His stomach rolled sickly.
Roger knew a little. Deacon knew a lot. And both knew that the world might just have changed forever.
Sneak Peek
Sneak Peek for Book 2: Day Zero: Stronghold Book 2, by Chris Jayne
Available October 2020.
Chapter 1
Lori
Day Zero: Monday
11:15 AM Mountain Time
Greystone Rest Area, I90, Montana
* * *
Lori Dovner stared at the black screen on her phone and let out a deep, desperate sound, more a whimper than a sigh. For a moment she thought about Simone’s discouraged whisper when she’d gotten out of the car not twenty minutes earlier: “J’espere.” I hope. When Simone had said the words, Lori had felt a moment of frustration that the young woman was not sharing in her optimism. They were “home free,” and truly nothing else could go wrong!
That happy emotion had folded like a cheap lawn chair. As the teenagers said Oh, Em, Gee. The man was who was trying to kill her was here in Montana and now, at the moment in her life she needed a cell phone more than she ever had, it was dead as a doornail in her hand. A lot could change in twenty minutes.
She desperately needed to call Roger back. She looked at her phone numbly. How could it be dead? That made no sense. It was fully charged; it had been plugged into the car’s lighter port all morning as they drove. Still, what did she expect from a cheap throwaway phone, even one that had smart phone features?
Could she turn on her real phone briefly? Saldata was here, not sitting at a computer somewhere monitoring her phone. She rejected the thought as quickly as she had it; if her phone was being tracked, he would have someone else doing it. No way could she risk turning her phone on, but, she hesitated, maybe they could boot up Simone’s briefly. First things first, though: she had to let Simone know what was going on and then she’d figure out how to get back in touch with Roger.
Lori hurried towards the fenced area, which had been set aside for a dog run. Crossing the parking lot, she noticed absently that both of the diesel trucks that had been parked in this back lot with their motors idling had turned the engines off. Lori welcomed the silence. With the constant sound gone, she realized how pervasive – and annoying - the steady low-pitched rumble of the trucks had been.
She paused to wait for a car, but then saw it was stopped, right in the middle of the parking lot. The Asian couple inside was arguing, the woman gesturing animatedly, the man with his head wearily forward on the steering wheel. When the driver saw Lori waiting, with a disgusted look he impatiently motioned for her to cross in front of him.
Brandon and Grace were playing with Sasha and a small dachshund that was climbing on top of Sasha as if she were a mountain. Simone sat on a bench in one corner of the dog pen, paperback in hand. The hardest thing for Simone, Lori reflected, had been staying off her phone. She’d done everything on her phone, including staying in regular contact with her friends and family in France, as well as having books and games available. But she clearly had been sufficiently intimidated by Lori’s experience that as far as Lori knew, she had never turned her phone back on since turning it off at Sylvia’s house a week ago. Talk about cold turkey…
At the Country Suites in Norman Oklahoma, a box of donated paperbacks had been in the lobby, with a sign that said, “Take One. Leave One.” Simone hadn’t had one to leave, but she’d taken a book anyway, and was sitting reading the romance now. In spite of her stress over seeing Saldata, Lori stopped for a moment to savor the commonplace scene. How ironic that the children and Simone were finally relaxed enough to enjoy every-day activities, and now she was going to have to shatter that.
Lori slipped next to Simone, relieved they’d be able to chat without the kids overhearing. Brandon was still relatively oblivious to what was going on, but Grace was listening to everything that she and Simone discussed, which made it very hard to talk frankly in the car.
“I need to tell you something,” she said quietly. “Something bad.”
“What?” Simone closed the paperback and her hands fell still on the book.
“I saw the man who is after me. Raoul Saldata. He was here.”
Simone started up, the sound of her indrawn gasp harsh, and she looked around frantically, eyes wild. Lori grabbed her arm, struggling to keep her voice low. “No. Simone, no. Stop. Calm down. He’s gone. He didn’t see me.” Slowly, Simone sank back down onto the bench, not taking her eyes from Lori’s face. “He’s gone,” she repeated. Quickly, she recounted the horrifying near miss in the restroom building. “So I called Roger and he said to stay here. Roger’s brother Deacon is coming to get us. We’re supposed to wait here until he comes.”
For the hundredth time on the trip Lori
questioned her decision to not go to the police immediately. Because she really did not know who she could trust in Miami, it made sense, but here in Montana? Maybe she should get in the car, go back to Billings, drive into the largest state police headquarters she could find, and lay the story out. Surely the cartel’s reach could not be this great. As she had the thought, though, she rejected it. Even if the idea was good, there was no downside to waiting until Deacon arrived and escorted them to Roger’s. The last thing she wanted to do was show up at a police station with the children. She had to leave them somewhere safe before any other decision was implemented.
“How long will that be? Before this man arrives?” Simone asked, her eyes dark with worry.
“No more than three hours. But this stupid cheap phone died on me while I was talking to him. I really want to call him back, but …”
Lori paused, her voice trailing off. While she’d been talking to Simone, with half of her attention she’d been watching the two tractor trailer drivers get out of the cabs of their trucks, exchange a few words, then walk together to where the car was stalled in the middle of the parking lot. The driver got out and gestured to the vehicle. The two truck drivers were facing away from Lori, but she could hear the car’s driver clearly, shouting in accented English. “Just no work. And I can’t get it started again.”
Simone touched Lori’s arm. “Lori?”
Lori didn’t look back at Simone but instead kept watching the exchange. Now the driver’s wife got out of the car too. “Something’s happening,” she said softly.
“What…?” Simone followed her gaze and also saw the group talking around the stalled car.