“Have you heard anything from Scott yet?"
Hugh shook his head. “I’ve sent some messages but haven’t received an answer. He might be working in the field somewhere, out on an operation.”
“How are you sending messages?”
“Basically a secure text message through radio frequencies.”
“I hope he’s got some information.”
“I’ll check again when I head up the mountain.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll head back home and start caching some supplies in case we have to bug out. My family is not going to like the idea of that.”
22
It was barely midday when Jim got home but he was physically and emotionally exhausted. He hadn’t slept well the night before and had been jolted from his sleep to help Hugh at the observation post. Then, after all the adrenaline surges of the morning, he’d spent the last two hours burying a stack of bodies. This was not what he wanted his life to be. It wasn’t what he wanted his family’s life to be.
Ellen and Pops were waiting for him on the porch when he got home. Nana and Ariel were painting signs for the gardens that told what each crop was and had a picture on them. Jim wasn’t certain if the task was more for Nana’s benefit or for Ariel’s. Neither liked to be idle.
“So what happened?” Ellen asked. She and Pops were desperate for news. They’d heard shooting all morning though had no idea what was going on, other than that Jim had been rushing around desperately with a gun.
“I’m thirsty,” Jim said. “Let me get a drink first.”
“You’re drenched in sweat,” Ellen said. “Sit down. What do you want?”
“Tea.”
“Sweet?”
“No, strong and bitter, like your husband.”
Ellen smiled. “Let me get some from the dairy. I’ve got some in the spring box and it will be nice and cold.”
She returned with a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with sun tea. The cold bottle was already gathering condensation on the warm morning. Jim held it against his forehead and relished the cold. He was going to miss air-conditioning later this summer. And cold beer. He needed to derail that sad train. Once he starting thinking about the things he missed it was a no win situation.
He launched into his story and explained what happened from the minute he got the call from Hugh until he got home. He talked about the need to change up the observation posts and watch more than the roads, about Hugh trying to reach Scott from power restoration authority to see if he had any information on whether the bounty on Jim was legitimate or a rogue effort. Finally, reluctantly, he told them that the attackers had been carrying a map to the house—the very house where he sat this moment enjoying his cold bottle of tea.
Jim looked at Ellen’s face as he made that final statement. She was terrified.
“They know where we live?” she asked.
Jim nodded.
“How?”
“I want to blame Fred Wimmer but the others have suggested that they could have found out any number of ways. There are people out there who know where our house is. Hell, they could have talked to the UPS man or something. We’ll never know.”
“That makes me sick, Jim. How are we ever going to have a moment’s peace?”
Jim didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know what they were going to do but they had to figure something out fast, before it happened again.
“Nana will want to leave,” Pops said. “She misses our home anyway. This may seal the deal. You think you all should pack up and go with us?”
“Not happening,” Jim insisted. “We’d never get all the things we need to survive moved that far. Plus people would notice and they’d get curious. They’d start talking. Pretty soon they’d put together the pieces and come searching for us at your house. Besides, we have people willing to fight alongside us here in the valley. If we go to town, we’re back in the position of not having enough people to defend ourselves.”
“We might not need people keeping watch in town,” Pops said.
“You’ll need people keeping watch wherever you are,” Jim said. “And what about food? We’ve got crops in the ground now that might keep us going another year. We’ve got too much invested here.”
“If we can keep it,” Ellen said. “These people won’t give up. They’re just going to keep coming.” There was desperation in her voice, a resignation that this was the new state of things and it was even worse than things already were. That possibility would have been hard to imagine a few days ago.
“How many people are you prepared to kill?” Pops asked.
“All of them,” Jim replied. “As many as it takes.”
Pops shook his head at that. It was not an expression of doubt but of a general distaste for the whole situation. This was not the world he wanted to live in. It wasn’t for any of them. No one would have chosen this world over the old, this life over their previous one, but no choice was being offered. No one got to start over because things got tough.
“What do we need to do?” Ellen asked, practicality rising to the surface now that the surge of emotion was subsiding.
“Too much of our survival is tied to this house and it’s compromised,” Jim said. “Some of our gear is still in the cave from when you guys moved there while I was gone. We need to stash more there. I’m going to create more caches out of those blue barrels I’ve got. Instead of just keeping food in them, I’m going to paint them camo and set each one up to be independent. I’ll store a weapon, ammo, food, and survival gear in each one and stash them in the woods. That way if we lose the house, we have options.”
“Lose the house,” Ellen repeated, her voice low and her eyes distant, as if she were trying to comprehend that possibility.
“We have to accept that could happen,” Jim stated. “This is the one thing I’ve figured out this morning. This family is the people that make it up, not the house. We have emotional attachments to this place but we can’t let that hold us back. We can’t let the emotional bonds to this house affect our decision making. We can’t put the important parts of this family at risk for something that’s not really important at all. This house is replaceable but it’s the only part of this family that can be replaced.”
“You’re right,” Pops said. “That’s the decision we ultimately had to make in leaving our own home. Nana continued to struggle with it. We built that house together and it’s a monument to our lives and our family. That’s not an easy thing to put behind you.”
Jim could tell Ellen was trying to convince herself Pops was right but he could also see some of Nana’s struggle within her. This would not be easy for him either. This farm was not just the house. It was all the extras he’d personally added to prepare for an event such as this. It was the cave, the gravity-fed water system, the solar backup, and the hundreds of other little touches. Without access to online shopping, he’d never be able to build something like this again. If they had to abandon the house, he’d never be able to replace it.
Never again in his lifetime would he be able to set up another house so perfectly for living without power and modern conveniences. Not only would the national recovery take too long, he didn’t have the time or energy remaining in his life to do it. It had taken him twenty years. The next twenty years of his life would be harder. His energy and strength would diminish. He would not be building self-sufficient homesteads. It was a tough pill to swallow. If he was forced to give his place up he’d never, ever have anything like it again.
He pulled himself out of that spiral. It was leading nowhere but down that negative emotional path that he was trying to avoid. The house wasn’t family; it was a resource. One he wanted to protect, yes, though it was secondary to protecting his family. He had to keep reminding himself of that.
“We restock the cave, cache stuff in the woods, disperse everything,” Jim said, as much to himself as to Ellen and Pops. “Any gear that’s redundant or a backup, I’m going to get out of the house and store somewhere else. As h
ard as it is to say this, I want the house to be disposable. It needs to be a shell we can jettison if the situation requires that. We have to start thinking that way.”
Ellen got to her feet. “Then you come up with a plan for that. The next thing on my list this morning was weeding the garden. I’m going to get started on that. When I’m done, you point me toward the next thing you need me to do.”
She started off the porch.
“Ellen?” Jim called. She paused at the bottom of the steps. “Rifle and handgun at all times now. And for God’s sake make sure you have a radio with you.”
Ellen backed up the steps and went inside without a word. He understood how she felt. Sick. Stunned. In shock. That was how he felt too.
23
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB)
While his hundreds of thousands of flyers worked their magic in southwest Virginia, Boss gave no indication that he was not fully onboard with his role on Owen’s team. To anyone working with him, he appeared fully engaged, running missions and dealing with the numerous threats to the new national agenda. His broad experience and natural acumen made him excel at the job. Several times Owen commented that he was glad Boss had put any thoughts of vengeance behind him.
"This is where we need you. This is your future," Owen said.
In Owen's mind those words were merely a statement of the obvious. He felt as if he was complimenting Boss on how he’d risen to the occasion, but when Boss left the war room on a late June day those words stung him to the core. They replayed over and over in his head. They were a bitter rebuke of everything he stood for. Boss had always preferred being the tip of the spear. He was the guy who got things done. That was not what he felt like now. He felt emasculated–neutered–and it was a bitter pill.
One byproduct of his new job was that he had his finger on the pulse of nearly every operation underway on the East Coast, giving him the ability to monitor the comings and goings of aircraft. Not only choppers coming in and out of JBAB, but throughout what remained of the DC Metro and Northern Virginia area. By means of that resource, he’d figured out that his favorite chopper crew was on-base right now, staying overnight for routine maintenance before heading out again in twenty-four hours. He needed to track them down. They needed to talk.
After some asking around and some less than routine menacing glares, Boss discovered that Gordon was rendezvousing with several other crew chiefs on the fringes of the base. He’d returned from his latest mission with a couple of growlers of beer from a brewery in Tennessee that continued to operate despite the current hardships. Under recent conditions, drunkenness was not tolerated and there were no places for a man to legally buy a drink. The policy was only loosely enforced and command tolerated recreational drinking as long as no one got stupid.
After an hour of walking around in circles, Boss found the men outside a battered shipping container loaded with spare chopper parts. The group was sitting around on rusty chairs and upturned five-gallon buckets drinking dark beer from clear plastic cups. When Boss appeared, an unfamiliar face interrupting their party, there was a flicker of concern until Gordon spoke up.
"No, he's cool," said Gordon. "We’ve got some business."
A comment like that would raise no concern among the other crew chiefs. As the only men who got outside the walls on a routine basis, the chopper crews were the primary conduit feeding the black market. In fact, of the growlers Gordon returned with, most were being sold to a cook running a speakeasy from a similar shipping container located elsewhere on base.
Boss addressed the men. "You mind if I borrow Gordon for a second?" It wasn’t really a question. He was speaking with Gordon regardless.
Gordon drained his beer and set the empty cup on a rusty drum of hydraulic fluid. "Save me some, boys." After they were standing a few containers away, Gordon asked, “What’s up?”
“I need a real favor this time," Boss said.
Gordon's brow furrowed. Distributing all of those flyers had been a pain in the ass. Of course, he’d been well-compensated for it so he had no room to complain. "What kind of real favor?"
“I've got an operation going down on the evening of the 4th of July. I need chopper transport to Southwest Virginia."
Awareness dawned on Gordon. "This is about those flyers, isn't it?"
Boss didn’t answer, which was all the answer Gordon needed. The big man’s look said it all.
"Listen, Captain Ballou, I will go wherever you need us to go as long as we got fuel and orders. My crew and I will do what we have to do. You got that part about orders though, right? There’s a flight crew and ground personnel involved. I can’t just fly off on a personal jaunt with no orders."
"I can cover that end of things," Boss said. "I’ve already laid the groundwork. I’ve got you guys up on a mission that'll fly you right over my destination on the day I need this to happen. I made a special request of your crew. No one will question that. It’s customary and within my authority."
"I can promise you my assistance. You and I have an understanding. But I’ve got two pilots that have to be onboard with this. I can't make promises for them, especially if there’s going to be flak when we get home."
Boss dug into a shirt pocket and extracted three Krugerrands. He handed them over to Gordon, who examined them in the palm of his hand. “Did these ease the minds of your pilots last time?”
Gordon stared at the dull glow of the coins in his palm. He hefted them, impressed at the weight.
"Consider that a down payment. One for each of you to show I’m serious. Tell them that each of you will get two more after liftoff on mission day.”
Gordon’s eyes widened. “Two more? That’s a lot of money. Are we going to have to do anything shady?"
"Not you guys. If all goes as planned, you won’t have to do anything but deliver me to the correct football field, let me pick up the package, and get me back in the air."
Gordon began to look nervous. The package wasn’t a pallet of booze or a duffel bag of tobacco leaves. It was a person. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, took a deep draw, visibly considered something, then came out with it. "I read your flyers. I didn’t know how you felt about me doing that so I tried not to, but how could I help it when I had to scatter the damn things out all over the countryside? This operation is about those hillbillies, isn’t it?"
“This is about insurgents,” Boss stated. “It’s about people delaying the national recovery effort by destroying public infrastructure."
Gordon inhaled and carefully blew the smoke away from Boss. "Yeah, I get that's the public story, and I’m no stranger to going on operations where I don’t ask questions. I’ve been on ops where I was told to not even turn my head toward the back of the chopper. This is different. Before I put my career at risk, before I put my guys’ lives at risk, I would like to know the real deal. I'm not a fucking idiot. If this was a legitimate operation you wouldn’t be paying us to keep quiet.”
Boss could have handled the situation with physical threats and intimidation to get what he wanted, but would play this differently. He liked Gordon and respected him. He’d risked his life to bring Boss home. Sure, it was his job, but he could have easily said there were no survivors, that they hadn’t seen any signs of life at that dark, flooded power plant, and left Boss to die. No one would have ever known the difference.
Boss raised his right hand in front of Gordon’s face. The stump was fitted with the carbon fiber gauntlet and the stylus attachment. “It’s about this,” he growled. “This is personal.”
Gordon looked from the attachment to Boss’s eyes and then away. He understood. That was indeed personal.
“If you read the flyers then you know I'm offering a bounty for the insurgent pictured in the photograph. I know he didn’t pull off that attack alone. He's part of an organized effort. If I find him and locate his base, I can find the rest of his people and erase any future threat they may present. And, of course, I hope to find the perso
n responsible for my hand. I remember exactly what he looks like. You don’t forget someone like that.”
"You’re really offering a bounty? I mean, you’re seriously going to deliver on that part of the bargain?"
"Definitely. I requisitioned a pallet of forty-eight buckets of survival food. I’ve got the ammo I promised set aside and ready to go. This isn’t nearly as heavy a load as all those flyers you delivered. Like the flyer says, we search for a signal fire or smoke on that day. Then we land and hopefully exchange the reward for the prisoner. I take him into custody and we lift back off."
"Then we bring him back here for questioning or are you just going to shove him off the chopper at altitude?" Gordon’s tongue had been loosened a bit by the alcohol, and he regretted his own words once he’d said them. Sometimes there were questions you didn’t want to know the answer to.
Thankfully, Boss didn’t take offense. "Neither," he replied. "You’re dropping us off outside of town. I need some quality alone time with the prisoner. Hopefully that will lead me to the rest of his group and I can do what needs to be done."
“How are you going to coordinate a pickup? Or is this a one-way mission?”
"I’m hoping I only need a week. I’ll have a radio and tracking beacon. You’ll be able to find me using radio frequencies but this beacon will stay off the satellites. That makes it our little secret."
“I don’t control my own schedule, man,” Gordon said. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be back in a week.”
“It doesn’t have to be a week exactly. You just swing over the area when you’re down this way. I’ll give you a radio frequency. If I don’t respond, try again when you’re back this way.”
"What if you never respond? What are we supposed to do then?”
The Ungovernable Page 18