The Hunters

by T J Reeder

  And since this airplane crap came up for gods sake if you have an idea that you think will help out please spit it out! If you can’t find me tell Joe or Willy or Sandy or somebody but don’t keep it in. We are going to be moving into unexplored situations and we need all the help we can get.

  Sandy was heard to say “Hey Asshole Sir! Sit down I need lap time! which calmed me down and set everybody else to cheering! She does have a way with words almost as slick as her 45’s. Almost.

  When Ralph and the scouts returned we had a meeting with him and the Mech folks who figured the best thing was to go back to Rock Springs and deal with Ralph’s plane before we started looking into every airport we passed. So they once again headed out escorted by a couple of scout teams as security.

  With not much to do but wait which was wearing me down I got out the atlas and started looking for airports in all the small towns scattered around the area. And surprisingly there was a hell of a lot of them, most were likely just small fields where locals could park their planes.

  What I found was a few within a 40 mile radius and without much thought I called together a team of shooters and scouts and prepared to roll. Joe wanted to come along so Willy stayed in camp. Charley of course was going along with his team of scouts.

  It was around lunch time when we rolled out and headed cross country to the nearest road that would take us to the nearest target marked on my map. We made it in about two hours only to find it was only a private dirt strip with a burned out hanger and the remains of a house that had partly burned with no sign of anybody around. The next field was about 20 miles but all on paved roads so we made it in good order.

  This one was still standing and the hangers were all closed except one. There was a small plane of some kind out in the open which made me think somebody tried to get it started after the EMP but couldn’t get it going. We opened the other two hangers and found two small planes that looked to be in good shape. There was what looked to be a small house close by which may have been a caretakers place or the owner who leased out space.

  We headed to the house and found it closed up tight. Standing there looking around I came to a decision, We were moving our camp to this place, It had a runway and I would bet some fuel here someplace and a well that we could power with one of the big generators.

  I had Charley send a scout team back to the base camp to lead the others here while the comm guy called to tell Willy what we needed them to do.

  With that we worked at getting the house opened up and aired out. It wasn’t a bad place for our head quarters with two bed rooms , bath and a nice sized living room with a kitchen / dining room combo.

  Who ever had lived here had taken most of their personal stuff with them but it was furnished. No bullet holes or any sign that anybody had even been here since the event. Strange but then again it was well off the beaten path. I wondered why a place like this would be out in the middle of nowhere with a good strip and three planes sitting.

  My first thought was drug runners but then I’ve always been a suspicious type. Look for the bad before the good coz you will usually find it quicker.

  We settled in for the night and bedded down where we could, Sandy had impounded one of the bed rooms and after shaking out the bedding and having some hot freeze dried dinner we were all asleep by dark.

  We left two people on guard duty and rotated every two hours, Sandy and I took the last watch because we loved the sunrise so after getting some coffee going and filling our cups we headed out to greet the day joined shortly by Charley who always did his whatever it was to greet the new day.

  When he was done he joined us and we sat quietly watching the sun win out over the darkness once again. It was the eternal battle between dark and light. Just like the battle between good and evil.

  It took most of the day for the convoy to roll in with the heavy haulers bringing up the rear with gun rigs escorting them front and rear. We had spent the day laying out how we would lay out the camp so as they pulled in we placed them where we wanted them. The service units like the cook units were in the middle easy to reach for everybody.

  The house would be used as a place for people to chill out in comfort, The bed rooms were to be used by the medical staff to handle any injuries or illness.

  All in all it was going to be a good move now we just had to wait to see if we would have air cover. The commo people were in touch with the Rock Springs outpost so we knew our people were there and working on the issue.

  I had now come to believe having some air power was of the greatest importance, wonder why it took so long? Maybe we had all spent so much time adjusting to the new world that we pushed aside the things we couldn’t do anything about.

  Hell I have no answers, I had gone from killing some killers and taking their old truck to mule back to driving a rehabbed truck and trailer to driving a rolling gun boat. And somehow leading a small but heavily armed army rolling around looking for trouble to now trying to build an air force.

  Which made me wonder why we weren’t seeing planes in the sky? Hell if we could get the idea why wasn’t others? Of course out here there was never a lot of people to begin with and anybody flying a plane would be pretty well stuck with staying close to their fuel supply and just maybe nobody wanted to bother with it. I got no answers.

  Well Sir, a week went by with little or nothing to show for it except Sandy had an idea that we should check every air strip like we were doing and salvage anything that even remotely looked like it might work on a plane hell we could maybe find a way to haul some small planes back here to help out with the whole mess.

  Well it was something to do so we did it. We headed out in small units of 4 vehicles and 16 shooters and a flat bed heavy hauler with several of the mechanics.

  I’ve never stolen an air plane before, all of our military equipment sure and a Prison and probably stuff I can’t remember but never an airplane. Wonder why it took so long to get around to it?

  Well at the end of that week our airport looked like a Wal-Mart black Friday sale where everybody flew in. We got really good at loading planes on flatbeds. We had to be real careful of the wings because none of us was real sure how to remove them so we left then on.

  One of the search teams called all excited about a discovery so cool we had to all run over to see it. A chopper! No not a Harley, A helicopter !! It was beautiful!! Sitting there in that big ol tin hanger and we had to have so the mechanics looked at it and figured out how to take off the blades which after I saw how easy it was I swore I’d never get into another one.

  One thing about the Corps, they haul your ass to the chopper pads or march you there and tell you to get on, you do, the dudes in front start it up and you go wherever they take you, then they drop down real fast and you jump out! Simple, except sometimes it’s way the hell down to the ground! Then they leave.

  So you never see the really shaky shit about how they are held together with rubber bands and spit and hundred mile an hour tape. And if you’re lucky they manage to find their way back to where they left your young ass.

  Anyway we now had a chopper!! It was gonna look cool sitting on the strip! We are so gear happy we have a few million dollars worth of military gear and we’re excited about a chopper that won’t fly. Men and their toys. But guess who wanted to sit in it all the way back to our base? Yep you got it. But that only lasted a few miles before she signaled she wanted off.

  But the first words out of her mouth were “John! You gotta get that thing up in the air!! Please!! I wanna be a door gunner!! I felt my mouth fall open and heard me saying “ Are you outta yer fucking mind!!??? People shoot at those thing! And when they get hit they have the glide ability of a fkn brick!!

  She just laughed and said how many fell with you in them? And y’all had way more people shooting at your’s then we will! I should have just said “NO and Hell NO! but that’s like telling water to not be wet or whatever. So I adopted a new strategy, I didn’t say a word.

&n
bsp; Ever know when you’ve lost a fight that you hadn’t even gotten into? Just got a memo saying nice fight you lost, too bad you weren’t there.

  But I smiled to myself and thought uh huh! Chopper pilots are thinner around here then air! So why argue about it? I win!

  We rolled into our base and had just shut down the trucks and we heard the sound of an airplane!! And there it came!! It was a crop duster for sure and Ralph waving as he buzzed the field! He came back and did a victory roll as he passed over head.

  It was right then in that moment I knew no matter what came we were gonna be ok, We were on our way back and nothing was gonna stop us including a bunch of fucking commie liberal limp dick asshole in DC.

  I felt wonderful!!! I was all smiles!! And never stopped smiling when Ralph landed and rolled to a stop!! As we walked to greet him my smile was getting bigger and I saw him running right at us with a huge smile on his face!! And right by us to the flat bed with the chopper on it where he started dancing and yelling and hugging anybody in sight.

  When he turned around and said !! I got a gazillion hours in one of these babies!! And we are gonna get her flying!!

  I stopped smiling, I looked around at Sandy and she was smiling when she said “ Check and Mate Bucko! Seems she knew all along Ralph was a chopper pilot long before he started flying fixed wing.

  I give up, I know when I’m beat. So right then and there I decided if she was gonna be a door gunner I was gonna learn to be co-pilot so when we bought the farm it would be together. I’ve been along, it sucks!.

  BUT! It wasn’t running yet and maybe I could see to it that it didn’t. Right then Charley looked at me and just shook his head and she turned around and said don’t even think about it Bucko or it’s gonna be a long cold year in your bed alone.

  Joe and Willy laughed right out loud and Charley almost smiled, I was living with a band of traitors so I stalked off and took a nap, only to wake up with a warm something snuggled next to me.

  So I put my arm around her and said if you get your ass killed I fully intend to die the next instant. She snuggled closer and said I wouldn’t want it any other way. Naps are good.

  The next day started with Ralph and the mechanics unloading the chopper and rolling it into one of the empty hangers we left for them to work out of the weather. Sandy was right in there with them and had grease up to her elbows and smeared over her forehead.

  The bird looked plucked, I never knew so much could be removed from them. From the way they were all talking this was going to be a piece of cake because it was an almost new bird and had been in a metal building and nothing seemed to be fried just mostly dry from sitting thru freezing cold and frying temps in a metal building.

  But they seemed to think they would have it fired up within the week. Ralph wanted to go back to where we found it so we took my HV and 2 gun rigs and a scout team.

  At the ranch where we got it Ralph went thru the hanger with a fine tooth comb so while he did that Sandy and I and our shadows went thru the big modern ranch house. It too seemed to have not been touched which we assumed was from being off the beaten path.

  It looked like nobody had been here when the event hit and they never made it home. We searched the entire place and found a room in the basement with a huge vault door encased in concrete and it was just begging us to get it open so I sent one of the escort team out to make a call for the safe crackers.

  While we waited we kept searching the place and found a safe in the master bedroom which cold wait for the burglar team but Sandy started searching and pulling out drawers and looking at the bottoms which showed nothing.

  She went into the walk in closet and moved stuff around and found nothing, then she looked up above the door and said WOW, John come here. I did and she pointed out a nice shotgun above the door on nails.

  I had to laugh because I do the same thing or did when I had a regular house, I reached up and removed it into the bedroom where other then dust it seemed in perfect shape. It was a FN/SLP a high dollar 12 ga auto. Very sweet.

  She called me back into the closet and said pick me up so I did and she shined her flash light and said on so I sat her down, she went to the safe and in 10 seconds had it open. The combo was written behind the gun and in the dark most folks thieves would be more interested in the gun and wouldn’t look behind it.

  She was butt up in the safe and I was just waiting for her to pop out with some kind of gold inlaid 1911 but she said “shit” and tossed a Glock out. One of the minders said hey you don’t want that? Sandy turned and said do I look like the cheap kind of girl who would wear a plastic gun? He just smiled and said I’m not even going there so stop it! I laughed coz like most he had learned, when would I?

  She next said !! We’re rich!! And tossed out a big stack of hundreds. Which nobody picked up. Then she tossed out a heavy bag that clinked so I opened it and it was full of small gold coins, I had no idea what country they were from and didn’t care.

  We had a big box in the back of one of the trucks where we put all this kind of stuff. It wasn’t that it wasn’t valuable it was just that in this world we now lived in it was less valuable then a good rifle.

  Or even the Glock Sandy had tossed aside with little thought.

  Maybe one day it would be nice to have to help rebuild if it became valuable again

  We heard the sound of a heavy truck and looking out the bedroom window we saw the wrecking crew rolling in. Sandy was still pulling stuff out of the safe and was stacking black boxes to the side so I opened one and it was a big diamond neck thingy, It could go with the gold, again no value as of now.

  When she was done she said lets go see what the wrecking crew is doing. She just loved guessing what was behind door whichever. It wasn’t that she wanted any of this crap unless it was a 1911 which was funny.

  She had just tossed out a million bucks or more in diamonds with no thought but if a 1911 came out of the big safe she would be in a dog fight over who go it. Which would be her since she was everybody’s pet. And shamelessly took it as her due. But at the same time she was always doing something for others so it was a trade off.

  We watched the wrecking crew working on the safe while their boss man was searching the entire area for any hidden combination. After about 20 minutes they had decided to just try ripping it out of the wall when Sandy said let me try, so she got down and turned the knob this way and that way and listened some more to the point the guys were starting to choke trying to not laugh out loud.

  Then with a flourish she turned the big wheel and the door opened, she stood up and smiled and bowed and stood back while the crew slowly opened the door enough to see that there wasn’t a trip wire.

  They peeked inside and then let her walk in first and a light came on! And we were in a room at least 20 x20 and it was stuffed with stuff. Crates and boxes, hell I could smell the packing grease from the guns in the boxes so we opened one and found it to have ten brand new FN/Fal battle rifles!

  Which in my opinion it the best battle rifle ever made, yes I love the AK’s and tolerate the M-16 but the FAL is just the cats ass and has been used on more battle fields the AK ever has.

  After looking at one for 3 seconds I could see these were all select fire weapons if they held true. Why would this guy have all this here in the middle of bum fuck Wyoming? The answer to that was in the back of the vault in another room. About a ton of white powder.

  I was about fed up with this shit, first the prison now this, was the whole god damned state a bunch of drug runners? Between the weapons and stacks of ammo it was a hell of a load.

  I just stood there and thought a bit then said ok, we take everything we can use except the dope, when this place is cleaned out we torch it. And that was that, it took a big crew a full day to unload the basement of everything but the dope which as soon as the place was clear I had it soaked in diesel.

  Mean time Sandy had gone thru and decided there was no sense in burning the books and paintings all of which to a
degree weren’t replaceable. So that was next, then she said hell lets take the big easy chairs and couches for our lounge at the strip.

  She also went back thru the place and checked the kitchen and found the wine pantry which was full of cases of wine which for all I knew could be wino wine but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. She also pointed out with a smile three cases of Johnny Walker!! Life is good! Screw diamonds! Good booze was worth more !

  When we were done the wrecking crew poured diesel fuel inside and tossed a road flare in the door. And from half a mile away we watched it burn. A million dollar dope house with millions of dollars of coke in the basement. Good riddance!

  By the time we were done with that task Ralph and his geek and wrench squad had pretty well figured out how to put the bird back together and two days later Ralph fired her up and she purred and leaped into the air! He was in heaven.

  I looked around for Sandy and didn’t see her and right then I knew where she was, damn her ass! She had slipped aboard the bird and when he came back over us she was waving at us. I could have strangled her but it would have only pissed her off and she might shoot me.

  After about half an hour of dancing that thing around the area he landed it and was all smiles a mile wide. Sandy jumped out of the back and said Ralph!! How long to get the guns on her? He spun around and said “you little shit! If I wasn’t scared shitless of you I’d spank your ass!