The Farm Book 3: Behind The Curve

by Boyd Craven III

  “...and I move the wand over here,” he said and then tapped the screen.

  “Is our baby healthy?” she asked. “I can’t see anything wrong.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dante said, ripping the sheets out of the machine. “Both our babies are fine.”

  “Both?” Leah stuttered, looking at the sheets. “Twins?”

  Dante nodded. “No wonder you were feeling crampy.”

  “Twins?” She squealed in excitement.

  Dante was wiping her stomach down with a towel, smiling. He’d clean the equipment up next.

  “Twins,” he agreed.

  “Twins?!” She screamed.

  “Well, I’m like 99.9735 percent—”

  She tackled him to the ground, kissing him hard. Dante only resisted for half a second.

  “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you glad to see me, Doctor Weaver?” Leah asked, straddling him.

  “Actually, that’s a Glock 43,” he said, grinning.

  “Asshole,” she said, playfully slapping his cheek.

  Ten

  Rob had surprised Angelica with the news that he was taking her to dinner and drinks after they picked up the supplies at the farm and feed. They hadn’t left the farm for a long time on anything not farm or school related. They hadn’t had a date night alone since before they had taken the job from the group. Angel felt under dressed, having been told to drop her vest and gun on the backseat. She still wore her sidearm and extra magazine holder on her belt, but her black tactical pants and white tank top gave her a Sara Conner look she wasn’t comfortable with.

  She thought Anna could pull it off, but she couldn’t. She was relieved when Rob had pulled one of her flannel shirts from the back seat on his side. She put it on, grateful he had thought of that too.

  “So, nobody is going with us. We’re going to have a night to ourselves. Ma said that if we didn’t even make it back home tonight, she’d be ok with that too.”

  “Oh my God, where would we go? We haven’t drank until sunup since before Harry…”

  “Who said we were going to drink all night long? There’s a hotel room about forty minutes away with a Jacuzzi in it that I reserved…”

  Angelica turned red in the face, but she was smiling wickedly. “You might have to run inside and check on the order. I’m not sure I can get the flush off my face in time,” she said as they pulled in.

  Doc Khamenei knew he would only have a few moments. The store had been expecting the farm's box truck and they had everything staged and on a pallet near the gate. It had been his luck to get a heads up that they had left in a personal vehicle instead of the cube van. Now all he had to do was get the firebrand of a woman to open her door or crack her window. He hadn’t been given a reason why the higher ups wanted to snatch someone from the farm, but they did. They promised to fill him in, it was part of a larger plan they were going to read him in on.

  They didn’t want to continue to be outmaneuvered by the group that owned the Langtry farm, that much Khamenei knew. Everybody seemed to have a personal beef with them in the higher ups. Doc figured that they were examples of what happened when somebody got lucky and pushed back enough. He didn’t think the group he was working for wanted that to spread. What Doc Khamenei did know, was where they were going to be taking anybody from the farm they could. Kelso county was a quick five-minute drive from the WWII Rohwer internment camp.

  “Excuse me, miss?” Khamenei asked, wearing one of the store's work shirts. “Do you want me to load your truck for you? I believe you had some bulkhead fittings you called in yesterday?”

  “Sure thing,” Angelica had said.

  Alarm bells never rang when she saw the kindly looking older man knock on her door. She’d cracked the window and talked to him, not surprised in the least that they had the order pulled and ready to load. The group always paid ahead of time and the store here seemed to really appreciate their business. Yesterday they’d had the order pulled and ready to load when she’d been there with Anna.

  “Sure thing, do you want me to move the truck?”

  “Actually, I can load a pallet right in the bed, but if you could help an old guy out, my shoulder has been bugging me. I can run the forklift fine, but the tailgate…”

  “Oh no problem!” Angelica bounced out of the truck and was halfway to the back when she felt a stinging sensation on the back of her neck. She tried to slap at the pain, but she was already falling.

  “Good afternoon sir, how can I help you?” the farm store manager asked Rob.

  “Doing pretty good. I’m here to pick up the last of the order for the Langtry Farm.”

  “Excellent. Actually, the guys outside should be loading up your box truck right now. We just need you to sign the receipt that you picked up the order.”

  “I drove my personal vehicle,” Rob muttered, signing his name to the will call sheet.

  “That’s fine. The boys outside seem to know the folks at your farm well, so I’m sure they’re already working on things.”

  “That’s great. Which way is your restroom?” Rob asked.

  “In the back of aisle 18,” the manager told him.

  Rob nodded and gave him a smile and headed back to take care of business. He was already mentally planning a romantic night, and thought Angelica would be pleasantly surprised.

  “Do we wait and snatch the husband?” ‘Sammy’ asked Doc.

  “No, the workers already figured out that the farm sent a different truck. We can’t risk a gunfight right here. We have to pick them off one by one, quietly.” Doc Khamenei’s words were whispered from the back of an old cargo van with a defunct electrical company’s name on the side.

  “Why are we still sitting here then?”

  “Patience,” the words were spoken to the man sitting in the front seat. “I’m making sure the sedative is stable. We need bait for our trap, and I want to make sure it’s lively.”

  “Don’t you think the group will just go to the news like with everything else they have done?” Sammy asked.

  “They didn’t release the tapes of your tar and feathering, did they?” Doc asked Sammy pointedly.

  “No, but that was the threat,” Sammy’s words were said with bitterness.

  “Then have faith in the plan. Our bosses get things right once in a while.”

  “I don’t work for the CIA,” Sammy said. “We have normal rules we have to follow.”

  “Sammy, your special team… did you really think you were operating as Homeland Agents? That’s funny, considering the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t kidnap and assassinate US citizens, yet you’ve done both.”

  Sammy had nothing to say to that. The other two agents who had come from backup gave each other a look. One had a wry smile on his face, the other looked a bit worried. That was when Sammy snapped his fingers and pointed. Coming out of the farm store was Rob. He strode to the truck, looking around in confusion. The workers had loaded the truck, but something was missing.

  “Get rolling now, slowly, easily.” Doc Khamenei told them.

  Rob saw the truck was loaded, but what he didn’t see was Angelica hanging out the side window. He was completely puzzled. Had she gone inside to use the bathroom and they just missed each other? Did she go back in to shop? He started to pull his phone out of his pocket to call her when it rang. He kept trying to swipe to answer it without looking, and realized that the ringing wasn’t coming from the phone in his hand. He looked in the truck and saw an old flip phone on the seat.

  His blood went cold.

  “Hello?” Rob asked.

  “Robert Little,” Doc Khamenei’s voice came out of the earpiece unaltered. “I’ll cut right to the chase. Your group has become a problem in this district, and I’ve been sent in to mitigate any damage or fallout. As you’ve noticed, your precious Angel isn’t around.”

  “Yeah, I noticed, did you have something to do with that?” Rob asked, trying not to let the anger seep into his voice.

&
nbsp; “Yes. She’s been sedated and is quite fine at the moment. You two are way too dangerous to keep awake. If you would like to see her again, alive, and unharmed, you have one choice and that is to work with me.”

  “What do you want?” Rob asked, getting into the truck. He had an idea that whoever was calling him was still nearby. They must have seen him coming out of the store in order to time the phone call. What vehicles had been nearby at the time? Had any left? His thoughts had been on flowers, dinner, sex. His narrow focus had allowed this to happen. He felt sick to his stomach. How was he going to explain this to Harry?

  “Simple. We want the occupants of the farm. We want you to willingly disband the markets that are held between the gate. We want the harvest finished, as fast as possible and we want the resources your farm has been hoarding.”

  Rob wondered just how much they knew, but decided they probably only knew about the farming operation and livestock. They probably could have figured out the rest, but when one considered how much food there was already walking around on hooved feet, or growing in the fields, it was a tremendous amount.

  “I can’t just snap my fingers and make that happen tonight,” Rob told him.

  “Oh, I expect it will take you a couple of weeks. Keep this phone handy and tell no one about our arrangement.”

  “I live on a farm with ten other people, coming home without my wife is going to raise some big questions.”

  “Make something up. Maybe you had a fight and she left you? I don’t know. Be very careful here, Rob. We’re watching you, and we will be in touch. Do not lose the phone.”

  Rob cursed when he realized he’d been hung up on. He wanted to break something, he wanted to go into hulk mode and smash and kill. Instead, he took a deep breath. If the company had come for him, he knew the resources they could throw at him for surveillance. He wouldn’t be surprised if his phone were being traced and tracked. A drone above wouldn’t be out of the question.

  “Is he going to the hotel still, or back to the farm?” Sammy asked.

  “No idea,” Khamenei told him. “Drones were all spoken for, and besides, they have bigger fish to fry. The protest for tonight needs to go off just right.”

  “Why are we sparking unrest?” another agent asked.

  “Are you curious, or are you asking something you know is need to know?” Doc asked him.

  “Curious, but if it’s over my pay grade, don’t worry about it.”

  Doc grunted, then checked on Angelica. She slept peacefully. “With more and more violence hitting the country just before the election, we need just a little more of a push before we can lobby the president for more emergency powers. One more little nudge and we think we can get him to declare martial law to put down the riots. Then we can disarm the people.”

  “That’s pretty fucking hilarious.” The agent who had been quiet spoke up. “We send a couple of guys in to rile up the crowd, then let them do all the damage and get in all of the trouble.”

  “All the while we get what we’ve wanted,” Khamenei said in way of agreement.

  “Trust the plan.” Another agent snickered.

  “I wonder how long it’ll take our current president and his supporters to figure out it was us, all along,” Doc Khamenei said quietly to himself, chuckling.

  Eleven

  The motion sensors had all gone off, alerting the crew who was having dinner in the big house. They watched the monitors and then saw that the two gates both started opening at once. Curt got up and was headed to the computers, but Harry beat him there. Harry changed the camera views with a few clicks of the mouse.

  “It’s my dad’s truck,” he said excitedly.

  “I didn’t think he was going to be back until tomorrow?” Grandma Goldie asked.

  “Maybe he wanted to drop the supplies off, before he started the romance?” Anna suggested, getting up from the table.

  The gates had started closing behind him, and Harry switched camera views again. “Where’s my mommy?”

  Suddenly, everybody at the table was up and watching. Rob drove in front of the workshop building and then motioned at the camera in a come here motion.

  “This can’t be good,” Steven said, pulling Anna towards the front door.

  “Roscoe, Ranger, heel up,” Anna called.

  Both dogs stood at attention next to her, waiting on her to move. Roscoe swayed on his feet a bit, as if his twenty hours of sleep a day wasn’t enough.

  “Let’s go. Move your asses, or I’m going to get the spoon on ya!” Grandma Goldie shouted at the throng of people in front of the door. “Something is wrong and that’s my baby out there.”

  Once the doorjamb was cleared, they jogged to the workshop. Dante had scooped up Harry so he could go faster. The group barely was able to keep pace with Grandma Goldie, who ran with her large wooden ladle in her hand, forgotten in the worry she felt. They all piled in, seeing that Rob had gone into the back room. His cell phone had been discarded at the picnic table. Anna was the first to get it, and called a halt.

  “Cell phones out,” she said.

  Ranger whined, looking at Rob. “Go to him.” Anna said, pulling her phone out of her pocket and tossing it on the table. The rest of the group did the same, and everybody who had a radio on them left them there as well. Rob made a hurry up motion from within the doorway, but he hadn’t spoken. They hurried, and when they were all inside the room that hid the lift down to the large basement, he closed the door.

  “Dad, where’s Mom at?” Harry asked his father.

  Rob fell to his knees and started sobbing. Ranger looked at his human in surprise, then pushed his head under Rob’s hands and head, licking his face.

  “They took her,” he said between sobs.

  He hadn’t intended on spilling the story. For most of the trip home, he had planned on going along with them, but as he stood in front of his friends and family, the words just came as freely as the tears. They had come to him in worry and fear themselves. They offered to help, to get her back. They would journey through the fire for him, and meet him on the other side of Hell.

  Harry was crying, but it was petering out. He understood what his father had said. The bad men, the hated, had taken his mother. They wanted what they had, and worst of all, they wanted the people there too. Harry was extremely bright for a little guy, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out they weren’t going to do that.

  “We need to figure out where they took her,” Curt said softly.

  “I’m calling Kerry and her boyfriend over,” Goldie announced, then rolled up the door and walked out, rolling it back down behind her.

  “Do you think she can help?” Anna asked Steven.

  “Kerry? Probably not, but Daniels might be able to,” Steven told her.

  “What are you thinking?” Dante asked.

  “Get all my guns and gear, when I know where she is, and take her back,” Rob said, sitting on the floor Indian style, his head staring at his feet in his lap.

  “Do you want any help with that plan?” Dante asked him.

  Rob looked up. The entire group was nodding, even Luis, who had been quiet up until this point. “You can count me in if you’re looking for help.” There was a chorus of me too’s from everyone.

  “Until I know where she’s going to be held, I don’t even know what kind of help I need. I will need to visit a storage locker near Booneville before too long though.”

  “Rob, is that where you’ve got goodies stashed?” Anna asked.

  He nodded.

  “If somebody snatched her, somebody from the government,” Andrea said softly, “they probably did it to provoke you into a response. That way they can send all the troops in.”

  “I know,” Rob told her. “But if I play their game, we get the same result. I have to be able to get in there and get out without leaving any pecker tracks that lead back to the farm here.”

  “I can think of a couple of things that might help. Untraceable ammunition and firearm
s. I even have some plans for some things that are quite nasty…” Anna told him. “The 3D printer and CNC stuff has just been getting dusty.”

  “Nasty things?” Rob asked.

  “Face front toward enemy,” Steven told him. “We have the plans.”

  “I got that stuff covered,” Rob told him.

  The way the men’s jaws dropped would have been funny to others, but Rob was thinking of his son and his wife. His mother and aunt would be joining them soon, hopefully with her new boyfriend with the state police.

  “Would it be safe to start researching on the internet where they have been holding people?” Curt asked aloud.

  “I doubt it,” Rob told him. “They probably are monitoring everything out here now. Something like that might trip them up that we’re thinking about something.”

  Jeff Daniels was fuming. He’d heard the story from Rob and hadn’t doubted it one bit. It was what Rob and the group were planning that left him in hot water, mentally and morally. He knew what they were planning was not legal, but things had escalated so quickly that he wasn’t sure morals and laws held the same weight that they used to.

  He’d joked with the tarred and feathered agents that if they didn’t cease operations in the area that hunting permits were going to be handed out. He was now facing a situation where that was about to become reality.

  He had three ideas as to where Angelica could have been taken. The first was the camp up near Fort Smith. The second was near the old Japanese internment camp in Kelso, south east of Little Rock near the Mississippi River and the state border. The third was just vague rumors that a camp had been considered at one of the old auxiliary air force bases, but that was again near Fort Smith.

  “We have to keep doing things normally here at the farm though,” Rob said. “Dante, I know you offered to help me, but I think I need you to finish the harvest. I’m supposed to be secretly working against everyone here, so we have to keep doing what we were going to do.”