The SEALs, Josh and his team waited impatiently as the flyboys worked at getting the helicopter airworthy. In days gone by, Josh would have called for an additional helicopter to come with more troops to secure the downed aircraft. A recovery operation would have been undertaken to either haul the downed helicopter back to base, or the machine would have been destroyed in place, depending on the situation.
Josh was more than a little concerned by the amount of noise the air crew made as they worked on the Black Hawk. The crew chief used a hammer to bash the rear wing into some semblance of its old shape. He would swing away and then holler for the pilot to test the controls; then he would repeat the process, making one hell of a racket. All the SEALs and Josh’s team were on edge by the time the fairing was replaced and the pilot declared the aircraft absolutely fifty percent safe for flight.
Smiling at Josh, the pilot wiped his greasy hands on the legs of his flight suit. “That’s about all we can do for it out here. Hope that shaft holds together. She took a beating on the way in.”
Josh didn’t smile. “Stay away from the trees, man.”
“You wanna fly us home?” the pilot shot back, his smile vanishing in an instant.
Josh let it go, realizing a pissing contest wasn’t going to help their situation. The air crew performed a cursory preflight, then cleared the area around the helicopter and began their startup procedures. Within a couple of minutes, the crew chief waved at the men on the perimeter to get on board. The inside of the helicopter was cramped, only being designed to hold eleven troops, placing the aircraft well past any safe weight and balance restrictions.
Josh felt the helicopter shudder as the pilot pulled the collective up, changing the pitch of the main rotor blades. Slowly they became airborne, hovered momentarily, and then the nose pitched slightly forward and they were flying. Josh watched the crew chief, hoping he could discern from the man’s mannerisms whether or not Josh should be worried. The man seemed alert, but not concerned as he hung out the side door, staring back at the tail section as they cleared the tree line and turned east.
Chapter 42
Jared and John were up first thing the next morning, pushing the VW bug around to the rear of the building, where the roll-up door stood open and the trailer awaited its mate. Another ten minutes and the trailer was secured to the rear of the tiny German vehicle. Jared was charged with driving while John rode shotgun. They would not wait for the others, who would follow on horseback. If they moved as a group, their progress would be tediously slow and act as a magnet drawing people to make contact with them. If Jared and John drove as fast as the little car would allow, they all felt this would afford them the best chance at getting out of town without being molested.
Once the horses were saddled, everyone nodded their goodbyes. Jared climbed into the VW, inserted the key, and waited until the other men were mounted and had ridden out of sight before he turned the key in the ignition. The VW sputtered to life, sounding so loud, Jared almost shut it off. If for some reason the vehicle broke down, Jared and John would return home on foot, where they would regroup and figure out another way to get the trailer and its contents up to the ranch house.
As the VW sprang to life, Jared glanced at John, who sat next to him, and could see the tension in his friend’s face, which seemed to match his own. In this new and much quieter world, noises like car engines seemed deafening and sure to bring trouble. Jared pushed the clutch in, put the vehicle in gear, and slowly pulled around the side of Solar Green, then out onto the road.
John wished he’d cut a turret in the roof so he could be up higher, searching for threats as they drove. Jared pressed the gas pedal and watched the speedometer climb from five miles per hour to twenty-five miles per hour over the course of an entire city block. They weren’t going anywhere fast by the old days’ standard, but in just three short months, Jared had grown accustomed to travelling slow, so at twenty-five miles per hour, Jared felt like he was flying.
John sat with a map folded in his lap, pointing out the various turns Jared needed to take in order to place them on East Santa Clara Street. Once they made the turn from South Seventeenth Street onto East Santa Clara Street, John folded the map and stuffed it into his cargo pocket. The next turn they would make was going to be onto Mt. Hamilton Road leading up into the mountains.
John kept his head on a swivel, seeking any signs of danger, not only from their front, but both flanks as well. He wasn’t much concerned with their rear since the chances of being overtaken were low, in John’s estimate. Even with his lack of concern for being pursued from the rear, John still cast a couple of glances rearward as they motored up East Santa Clara Street.
Jared drove, weaving his way through the cars left abandoned on the street, until they reached Highway 101, where Jared pushed harder on the gas pedal as the vehicle slowed on the incline of the overpass. At the top of the overpass, a sea of abandoned vehicles stretched up and down Highway 101 for as far as the eye could see. There would have been no way to drive their setup through all that traffic, and Jared was relieved the current street was not in the same condition.
When they began their descent off the overpass, the speedometer eclipsed thirty-five miles per hour. Jared eased off the gas a hair, feeling the trailer tugging at the rear of the small German vehicle. The last thing he wanted was to have an accident because he’d been driving too fast. As he slowed the VW slightly, he saw John nod his head in silent agreement.
Josh stared blankly out the side of the Black Hawk as they cleared the coastal range of mountains, racing towards the city below. The pilot’s and copilot’s excited voices over Josh’s headset shook him from his thoughts. Something or someone was commanding the pilot’s attention to the point of diverting the aircraft slightly off course. Josh moved to the opening between the back of the aircraft and the pilots’ seats.
“What’s the deal?” he asked, straining to see through the Black Hawk’s windshield.
The copilot pointed straight off their nose. “A car, there’s a car down there, moving, towing something, I think.”
Josh rose so he was squatting, his head as high as the ceiling would allow. The helicopter was now following a straight road, and Josh could see a small vehicle with a trailer attached to its rear, chugging along the road in front of and below the helicopter. The car was about two miles out, but the helicopter was closing the gap quickly. The helicopter had been traveling at two thousand feet AGL when the pilots spotted the little vehicle. Josh, however, wanted a much closer look at the strange sight below.
“Get lower,” Josh shouted. “I want to see what they’re up to.”
The pilot in control of the aircraft eased the nose over a few degrees, causing their altitude to evaporate. When the large helicopter was at eight hundred feet, the pilot leveled off, racing toward the vehicle from behind.
A quarter mile from the little racing anomaly, Josh shouted into the mic, “Roll left. Pass ’em fifty yards off their left side, man.”
Josh knew if these men were armed, the driver would be far less capable of managing a rifle than the passenger. The real threat when doing a low pass always came from the passenger side in a two-door vehicle like the one they were converging on. If the vehicle were a large SUV, Josh might have instructed the pilot to fly right over the top and do it at a higher altitude. Josh wasn’t overly worried about someone shooting at them from the back seat of the VW Bug.
The trailer in tow was pulling the VW back and forth and must have been a handful for the driver, Josh noticed as he drew nearer. When the helicopter roared past the vehicle, Josh saw the driver snap his head over, a look of shock, which was immediately replaced with concern, clearly discernable on the driver’s face, even at fifty yards away. Josh leaned as far out the side door as he could safely do, scrutinizing the vehicle’s front windshield. He clearly saw two occupants hunched over in the confines of the German car, and then he was past and climbing away, heading back to base.
Josh ju
st saw the first working vehicle outside of what they kept in the base’s inventory, and the vehicle had been occupied by two men, towing a trailer full of what looked like solar panels. Josh’s team, along with the SEALs alike, were screaming into one another’s ears in excitement over what they’d just discovered.
“Looks like someone’s got a car running and is putting together their own little power grid down there,” came the pilot’s cheery voice over the headset.
Josh removed the headset and hung it on the bulkhead before moving back to his seat in the cramped back of the helicopter. Josh thought about what they’d stumbled on. The two men in the vehicle were heading out of town, not into town, and were in possession of a fully functioning vehicle. The two men were also up to something with the solar panels, Josh mused. The fact that these men were over three months into the event and were thriving under the circumstances mystified Josh.
It also caused him to think of them as possible threats. Men who could survive this long under these circumstances were men who would ostensibly be armed and distrustful of the government, along with anyone else who wasn’t part of their crew or community. When Josh had received orders to work out in California, he was stunned at the number of Californians who were armed and who did not care for any sort of outside or government interference.
In and around San Francisco Bay, there wasn’t much of this, but thirty miles outside the greater Bay Area, people were not like what California was portrayed to be in the media. Josh was sure when he reported the incident to his command, they would want a closer look at these people. The sitting government, at first, was very clear on what it was they wanted to achieve, including how they intended reaching those goals.
After the retrieval missions began to dry up due to the chaos in the cities along with the fact that they were unable to locate many if not most of their targets, the orders coming from wherever they came from seemed more and more desperate. Josh was relieved they hadn’t been in the business of bringing survivors back to the base, due to the food situation. With the personnel living on base, there was only enough food for maybe a year. Any additional mouths to feed would reduce that drastically.
Josh pulled a map from his pack and, using a grease pencil, drew a circle in the area he’d seen the vehicle, adding an arrow indicating its direction of travel. If they wanted him to come back, at least he would have an idea where to look for these people.
The Black Hawk helicopter appeared seemingly out of thin air on their left side, causing Jared to nearly soil his trousers. John immediately scanned for any mounted weapons, but saw only armed men staring down at him. None of the men were pointing rifles in his direction, so John relaxed a little as he studied the aircraft for the few seconds it was close enough to make out details.
John wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw at least eight men inside the cabin of the aircraft, although he couldn’t identify a single one due to the distance and rapidness with which the helicopter appeared and was gone.
“That scared the crap out of me,” Jared blurted, ducking his head to gaze through the smallish windshield after the receding aircraft.
John was silent, his mind churning over any and all possibilities in regard to seeing a helicopter in broad daylight. Not only was the helicopter operating during the day, but it buzzed them like some Top Gun movie. John could only imagine the occupants wanted a closer look at what was presumably the only car they’d seen on the road since the event.
“Who do you think they are?” Jared queried after calming himself slightly.
“Gotta be some of the boys from my old command. There were a lot of guys on that bird, eight for sure, maybe more.” John thought for a moment. “If that’s the same Black Hawk that flew over last night, then they would have to have another base over on the coast,” John mused out loud.
Jared pressed the gas just a bit harder after seeing the helicopter loaded with guys just as capable as John. Seeing the military out hunting again unnerved Jared. If they were friendly, great, but if they meant to impose their will on him or anyone in their group, there would be problems.
The remainder of the trip was stressful, but uneventful. When they reached the dirt road to the ranch house, John leaped out and opened a hole in the fence, allowing the little VW an avenue to pass through. He motioned Jared forward, then stuck his head in the window.
“Move up the road out of sight and shut down until I’m finished here. I’ll be there in a few.”
Jared dipped his chin and gassed the car into forward motion, leaving John to stand in a cloud of dust kicked up by the VW and trailer. John broke a large branch off one of the many bushes near the fence and used it to brush away any tracks left by the car or trailer. He reattached the fence to the old weathered fence post, leaving behind no sign he and Jared had passed through. When John was finished, he jogged the half mile to where Jared stood next to the car, rifle hung at low ready, waiting and scanning.
The two men climbed back into the car, started the raucous engine, and continued the last short distance to the ranch house. Like every time Jared left, he felt a sense of dread as he got close to the house. He hoped the women and especially Essie were fine. When he and John pulled into the ranch house’s front yard and he saw the front door to the residence was intact, he felt a little better. When Essie came blasting through the door with Shannon close behind, Jared breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Salvador was much more standoffish as the women and two men hugged, excitedly talking about the helicopter they’d heard the night before and then again a few hours ago. Essie didn’t leave Jared’s side as everyone caught up on how their trip went and what the women did to remain busy while Jared and the rest of the men were gone. Only a couple of days had passed, but it was evident Shannon, Stephani and Claire were happy to have company.
Crank came around the corner of the house, stopped, then barked briefly before sniffing at the air and finally approaching the men.
“That dog keeps us up all night with his barking and growling,” Shannon complained, fixing eyes with John.
John smiled as he scratched the dog’s head. “Probably all the wildlife out here. He’ll get used to it and settle in the longer he stays with us.”
“I sure hope so,” Stephani injected.
Later that afternoon, Carlos, Barry, Calvin and Devon arrived home, tired, sore and hungry. Jared knew someone was coming when Crank tore out of the house, heading toward the OP, which was unmanned at the time. Both John and Jared followed the little white dog until they saw the men riding in. Their ride, although long, had gone smoothly, with Devon guiding them away from any unwanted contact with the people in and around the greater San Jose area. It wasn’t that any of them were antisocial, it was just a matter of minimizing one’s risk. The more contact you allowed with other humans, the higher your risk of getting killed or hurt was.
Chapter 43
Over the next two days, Barry and Jared worked together on the electronic component of their solar endeavors while Carlos and John worked on devising a method to install the panels in a manner in which they could absorb the most sun and not topple in a strong wind. John and Carlos ended up tearing portions of the shed down and using the timber to build a rack-like system to cradle the panels so they were off the ground and secure.
Barry needed to repair some of the motherboards in the inverter and other components, but was at a loss on how to do it, when Jared suggested using a fire like a blacksmith would have used. They could superheat a spike or nail and use it just like a soldering iron.
By the end of the second day, Barry wrestled the electronic components into a serviceable condition, ready to connect to the panels. The third day the men hung the Powerwall batteries on the side of the ranch house and connected them to the panels.
On the fourth day, Barry completed the last few tasks and connected the battery to the house, powering everything up. The women screamed in delight as the refrigerator hummed to life, accompanied by many of the l
ights inside the house. Jared went around the house shutting all the lights off, not wanting to drain any unneeded power from the batteries.
After the joy of finally having some level of power back wore off Jared and the group, they all sat and talked about what they needed in the way of electrically operated items. Many items simply wouldn’t work, having been damaged too badly by the event to even consider being repaired. The fact that the refrigerator worked was astonishing to Jared until Barry informed him the unit was probably older than the both of them and probably had the same amount of electronics in its innards as a 1908 Ford Model-T.
While Barry labored with the solar array, Carlos finished solving their drinking water problem by way of a filtration system he built. No one had been able to get to a pool store for the calcium chloride Carlos needed for the perfect setup, but instead he improvised. Carlos used a large blue barrel, lining the bottom with charcoal taken from the group’s many fires. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now. Next, he packed small rocks on top of the charcoal, and lastly, he poured sand over the rocks. When he was finished, the barrel was a third full of his ad hoc water-purification system.
Carlos constructed a stand for the barrel and brought both items inside the house, placing them in the corner of the kitchen like a water cooler. Carlos stretched a folded sheet across the bottom of the stand and set the barrel on top. The barrel pinched the sheet against the stand, allowing it to sag only slightly. Under the stand, Carlos placed a small tub for gathering the filtered water that drained from a small hole Carlos cut in the bottom of the barrel.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 32
