But it was becoming clear that the “Sharpshooter” Russell who had built this place and formed this community was a far cry from the joyless, crotchety, short-fused Grover Russell. Cody remembered only a man who had tried to raise his three sons as though their little New Hampshire home were an annex of West Point. Early starts, cold showers, inventive punishments, and generalized anxiety; these were his memories, and they collided badly with the generous, gregarious man that Cabot seemed to be describing. Teaching classes, demonstrating fieldcraft with patience… These weren’t the actions of the irritable, ferocious man who had brought Cody up. This other man, this better man, he had never seen, and couldn’t have known. The absence of that knowledge began to nag at him, and during their quiet walk east, he tried to reconstruct in his mind parts of his father’s life and personality from the scant material at hand.
“Boys,” Cabot said to the two youngsters, “how far would it be to the road from here?”
“Eight hundred yards,” said Bryce without hesitation.
“Closer to six,” Max corrected.
“Let’s settle on seven,” smiled Bryce.
“Now, why would I waste money on a GPS device when I’ve got him around?” he smiled, giving Bryce’s shoulder an affectionate punch. “Besides, the damn thing would just blow a gasket on me, like what happened the other day. The best GPS ever, and the only one you should ever need,” he said, tapping his temple, “is the one in here.”
Following some kind of pre-arranged instructions, the two boys double-timed ahead and were soon swallowed by the woodland; only their footfalls could be heard, interspersed with bird song.
“They’re gonna scout the natural route from the road up into our patch,” Cabot explained. “We do it about once a month. Just to see who’s been here.”
As the distant sounds of patrolling teenagers faded, Cody said, “Hey, uh, John? I gotta tell you about something we saw on the way up here.”
“The four of you,” he said, marveling at their escape, “should write a book when this is all done.”
“Except no one would believe it, right?” Cody said. “That’s just the thing. It was really, really weird. We hit a National Guard roadblock at Colebrook, you know, where the roads meet and head into Canada…”
“Sure, border area.”
“That’s right. The guards were stopping people fleeing into Canada, I guess, although everybody would have been walking. None of the Guard vehicles worked…”
“Of course they didn’t,” Cabot railed, “because nobody at the DoD has enough foresight to plan for stuff like this.”
“… so they were ‘negotiating’ for the Dodge, not getting very far…”
“Good for you, son,” Cabot smiled, giving Cody a comradely smack on the knee.
“When about a dozen irregulars came out of nowhere and attacked the checkpoint with automatic weapons.”
He blinked twice. “They did what?”
“Citizens, militiamen, criminals, I have no idea, but they went full auto on a bunch of well-meaning weekenders in uniform.”
“Casualties?” Cabot asked.
“Dunno. We hauled ass faster than you could say ‘collateral damage.’ They had plenty of firepower, but they weren’t that well-organized. Jacob reckoned the attackers, whoever they were, had started pulling back by the time we were leaving.”
“Can you describe these people?” Cabot asked.
Cody did his best. “When I say ‘irregular,’ I mean from head to foot. Different types of camo, a mix of pouches and such. But the weapons… I mean, they must have ordered them somewhere special or gotten lucky at a gun show, or maybe a frustrated reservist with a gambling problem helped some weapons ‘disappear’ from the armory, I couldn’t say.”
Cabot brought out a notebook from his inner jacket pocket. He wore a sleeveless number that was busy with pockets, equally suited for armed combat and fly fishing. “About a dozen, you said?”
“Yeah, something like that. It was dark, and the muzzle flashes kinda blinded me at first.”
“Full auto? You’re sure about that? It couldn’t just have been a bunch of guys firing together?” Cabot hoped.
“Big, long bursts,” Cody recalled. “Pretty wasteful. Most of the time, they tracked high and had to start again.” How had he remembered such a small detail, from within that panicked that moment?
“Any grenades, explosions, claymore mines?” Cabot asked. “Bazookas, that kind of thing?”
“Not that we saw.”
“Were they carrying radios? You see any aerials, helmet microphones, people on the phone?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“What about night vision goggles?”
“I think so. It would have been very difficult without them.”
Cabot noted all of this, then turned to Cody. “Son, I don’t want to worry you without good reason, but I don’t want to sugarcoat things, either. These people are bad news. Like I say, we’ve been running into groups of them. Never as many as a dozen, but they show up in threes and fours, here and there. All armed, and usually fairly sloppy, you know, talking all the time as though no one could possibly hear them, lighting cigarettes in the dark, that kind of thing. They’re half-assed, but I’m damned if they haven’t been probing the perimeter of the homestead, looking for a way in that we might have missed.”
As if to find one of these gaps, Cabot stood and peered into the woods, but he was merely trying to see where the two boys might have gotten to. “Reckon they found something. They’re normally back in a flash.”
It took a moment to crystallize in Cody’s mind, but he realized then why the camp might be so very attractive to others. It would provide shelter and ready sources of food, both long-term stores and the vegetables growing in the neat gardens which flanked the cabins. And if one desired to remain hidden, even sufficient to remain beyond the reach of the law, the camp was near-impossible to access, readily defensible, and a long way from anywhere. Like a perfidious bird stealing another’s nest, the far-right posse could simply overwhelm the Russell homestead and make it their own.
But there was little chance that Cabot and his comrades would simply walk away, and in the present climate, Cody judged, the homesteaders would put up a ferocious fight before yielding. The prospect curdled his thoughts; women and children, trying to fight off neo-Nazis…
“Shh,” said Cabot urgently, though Cody had been silent. “Listen.” Three short claps followed distant rustling. “Come on,” Cabot whispered, abruptly leading Cody forward at a pace that would have stretched most men of Cabot’s age. The branch-strewn path broadened slightly as it approached the road, heading downhill; runoff water formed trickling streams on either side. “Those three claps… that’s Max’s signal. Let me check it out.”
Cody knelt by the gnarled trunk of a pine tree and kept his rifle trained ahead of him. Cabot moved with surprising grace for a man of six-one and seventy years old, pausing by a tree to listen and then pressing on, keeping low, and to the edge of the rough path. The next time, Cody heard it too—three short claps in a row, just a little slower than a woodpecker might tap.
Cabot reappeared and waved Cody forward so that they met up in the shadow of a large bush crowded with red berries. Cabot used hand signals that mostly made sense; once Cody’s eyes followed the direction and filtered out the branches, he saw that Cabot was pointing to two men.
One was sitting on a green rucksack, and the other was standing, speaking with him, holding his rifle low and loose. Their other gear was in various states of order, with enough of it that Cody guessed they’d been dropped off by a truck or SUV and then carried the loads in.
“How long they been here?” Cody whispered.
“Since before the incident. They probably don’t know about it.”
“Should we tell them?”
“No, son, we should not,” Cabot spelled out. “Those are the enemy. I’ve seen that guy before, the one who’s standing. Never far from his AR-
15. The other dude might normally just be a driver, but I think they’re here to establish an OP.”
“A what? Oh, an observation point,” said Cody, remembering from his dad’s army field manuals.
“Well, two can play at that bullshit,” said Cabot. “These guys aren’t going anywhere. They’ve got two tents set up, over that way, and plenty of supplies, by the looks of it. Whatever they’re doing now must pass for a ‘patrol’ where they come from. Just looks like sitting around and chatting to me.”
“Are they really, you know, dangerous?” Cody asked Cabot. Behind him, Max and Bryce reappeared as though they’d beamed down from the Enterprise.
“Well done, fellas,” said Cabot warmly. “Take point on the way back. We got people to tell and things to do. And yes, Mr. Russell, they’re dangerous. Because stupidity makes people do unsafe things, and believe me, these people are fully-fledged, card-carrying morons. Small brains operating big guns, that’s scary enough, but toss in some bullshit ideology about bringing down the government or defeating some ‘international conspiracy’ of bankers and industrialists, and then it’s the kind of dangerous that might just walk into our camp one day and decide they’d like to stay. You know?”
26
The Russell Homestead 17:15, Day Three
The rest of the gear would wait until tomorrow. Cabot sent Max and Bryce on a final “fitness exercise,” ferrying six duffel bags of supplies out to their hastily-formed listening post near the road. They quietly hid each duffel under leaves and branches about 900 yards from the “enemy” OP. He’d ordered them back to camp for tonight, though both teens had half-expected to be sleeping—or what passed for it—while keeping watch on the two “morons.” The four-mile round trip—their second in a day—wore them out; both were hungry during dinner and very quiet after.
“Mrs. Russell, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow Cody this evening?” Cabot said courteously, as though asking for a dance. “Got some things I want to show him. I promise I’ll have him home by midnight and no funny stuff.”
“None at all?” Mary joked.
“Well, that depends on how much of his old man’s scotch we get through.”
“Oh, shit,” Mary groaned. “Cody, honey, you know what you’re like after whiskey, whether it has an E or not.”
“I’ll be fine,” claimed Cody ambitiously. “The kids okay?”
So far, it had been a success story. “They both actually seem to love it here. Emma said being here was a mix of summer camp, First Blood, and Noah’s Ark.”
Cabot got a laugh out of that. “She’s a treasure. And Jacob? How’s he doing with the radio?”
“There have been,” Mary reported, “some pretty strange noises. And he set fire to something, but thankfully, it wasn’t serious. Some complete fool,” she said, casting a furious glance at Cabot, “let him borrow the right tools .”
“If he burns down the cabin next time, we’ll be blaming you,” Mary said, sing-song and sarcastic. “But he says there’s been ‘progress.’”
“Great. Y’all have a great night. Cody,” said Cabot, nodding to his cabin, “why not step into my office?”
Most of the diners were finishing up. Maddy and her crew gathered remaining plates and forks and wiped down tables. “Everyone liked the coconut curry,” Cabot reported.
“Wish it could have stayed in the freezer for a while longer,” replied Maddy. “But making things from scratch every day is fun, too,” she said, her shoulders scrunched with inquiry. “Sure, it is. Lots of work, but lots of fun.”
“We appreciate every second, Maddy. And your two helpers.”
“You bet.”
Just off the dining hall was the kitchen extension to the right, and another addition to the left which contained Cabot’s office and quarters, upstairs from a storeroom for dried goods and pickles. “This was the original cabin two,” said Cabot, “but when groups started coming, we had to make a dining room and kitchen and ended up splicing one and two together. Your dad’s quarters was kinda, well, historical, and I didn’t want just to toss it, so we took it apart and reassembled it as an extension for the upper floor, with a storeroom beneath. Tallest spot in the place, and not too bad for stargazing when it’s too cold to be outside.”
The kitchen’s chimney brought some heat to the place, and Cabot quickly got a small fire going in the grate. “Your dad could start a fire just by looking at the wood a certain way,” Cabot remembered. “It was like he had matches for fingers.” Then he slid into a battered, red armchair by the fire and waved Cody into its twin on the other side. “I hope your good lady doesn’t mind me stealing you away,” Cabot said, turning in his chair to find glasses on the cabinet shelf in the corner. “Figured we should get a little better acquainted.”
“Sure, John,” said Cody, just slightly uncertain. He’d have felt equally comfortable becoming ‘acquainted’ while there were other people around, but Cabot seemed intent on setting aside this time for them to be alone.
“I also figure,” Cabot said, handing Cody a glass with three fingers of Bruchladdin, “that you’re here to keep your family safe, absolutely, but that’s there at least one more reason.”
“Yeah?”
“Your dad, Cody,” said Cabot sympathetically. “This place was everything to him. The woods, the work he was doing. You only got to see a little of that, but he and I spent… well, altogether, probably five or six years taking care of this place and looking after the dribs and drabs of people who used to show up. He told me once that I was as close a friend as he’d ever had. Mind you, that was after a couple o’ these,” Cabot smiled, tapping his glass. “But I think he meant it. We just came at things in the same way, you know? Saw problems, and then found solutions. Neither of us had any time for drama or carrying-on.”
“Sounds like you were an ideal partnership.”
Cabot jumped oddly at the word. “Oh, I didn’t mean… you know… that we were… That’s to say, neither of us swing that way, I’m pretty sure.”
Once he’d finished laughing at Cabot’s expense, and the old man had called him a couple of things it was better Cody’s children didn’t hear, Cabot refilled their glasses.
“My brother died a couple of years ago,” said Cabot. “Brain cancer, gone in six weeks. Poor Harry, he hardly knew what hit him. Right at the end, I think on his last lucid day, he said to me that he only had one regret.”
“Not spending enough time with family?” Cody guessed.
“Most people say that, you know,” confirmed Cabot. “But Walter said, ‘I regret not sharing my life with my children.’ He had four—three boys and a girl—and he told me he’d never taught them how to fish or taken them on long drives just for the sake of it or shown them around the little town on Lake Michigan where he’d grown up. To them, he’d been a model of behavior, and a guide to life and its challenges, but he was never their friend. That’s what he said. He wished he’d opened up to them like a friend would.”
“That’s sad,” said Cody, already two-thirds of the way down his second glass of Bruchladdin. “The chances that come and go.”
“I’m not the kind of guy,” Cabot said, “to stick my nose into other folks’ business, but I’m gonna share an insight I’ve had since you’ve been here.”
“Share away,” said Cody. The fire cast wavering, orange shadows on the rough-plastered walls.
“I don’t believe,” said Cabot, clearing his throat as though approaching an awkward truth, “that your dad shared his life with you very much, Cody. I think he kept you at arm’s length, like my dad with me, and my brother, Harry, with his kids. And I don’t know if I can do anything about that. I don’t even know if it’s okay for me to try. But I’d like to. Would that be all right?”
“Like I said, you knew him better than anyone I’ve met in twenty years.”
“It’s this place,” Cabot said. “It complicates things. I mean, we don’t have signs up saying, ‘Preppers Only,’ and there’s no political acid
test for new arrivals. But people see cabins in the woods and their minds can only go to a few different places: the Unabomber, or heavily armed cultists, or militia crazies.”
“I wouldn't have needed to come up here to see you’re not any of those things, John.”
“That’s good, but let me say this: Grover Russell loved his country. He came up here because he was worried about some things that were happening to it. That don’t mean he wanted to tear down the government or go shooting migrants at the border. He just didn’t like being around so many dumbasses at once. Founded this place as a refuge from all of that. Not from political correctness, or from the machinations of the Davos elites. He wanted peace and quiet so he could appreciate life his way.”
It struck Cody that Cabot would go to such pains, just to ensure him that his father hadn’t been a nutjob. “I think I understand, John.”
“He used to say, ‘I know lots of smartasses and plenty of dumbasses, but where’d all the regular, dependable folks go off to?’”
Cody laughed. “I remember that one, too.”
“I don’t think he ever understood,” Cabot continued, “how we could achieve such amazing things as a country, but then go make basic rookie mistakes. Your dad and I talked about the Iran hostage thing, over and over. I think it stood in for Vietnam, in our conversations, if I’m honest. Something to point to and ask, ‘Why did we get ourselves involved with that? What were we thinking?’ He wanted to know what those mistakes meant, what they said about who we are, and how we should be in the world, as people and as Americans. He really wanted to understand that. Our proper place, our best role. I know he wanted us to do more, but he wasn’t an interventionist.”
Protecting Our Home Page 15
