The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark

by Boyd Craven III

  “Out of the blue, my wife is hauled into the FEMA camp we’re helping to run, and it was like we were never apart. The love was still there. I can’t thank you enough for bringing them back, but hearing you with Jamie just now… Shit…”

  “You don’t know what to do?”

  “See, Frankie had been working for me for a couple of years. She was like a kid sister to me. I got her the gig with the department because she was my buddy’s cousin, and she just needed a door opened…”

  “And you two became close?” I asked.

  “It was platonic for years. It was a month after I had started to believe Jamie to be dead that she found me. I had my service pistol in my mouth. She told me how she felt, how she had been feeling, and begged me not to do it. I wanted to, but suddenly I realized I wanted something else, too.”

  “To be needed?” I asked him, remembering Courtney’s raw admission.

  “It was more than that; I needed to be loved. I realized that part of me did have feelings for her, so we explored the relationship and it grew over time.”

  “Wait, where is Frankie now?”

  He wiped his eyes and looked at the barn and pointed.

  “Staying away from me. Kind of like the way you were avoiding Jamie for a while there. I thought you were doing that for me and I could see right through you… but just now… I feel bad I ever thought…”

  “You’re going to tell her?” I asked him suddenly.

  “Yes, I have to. It’s eating me up inside. Guilt, shame. I knew from the radio that Michigan was basically a ruins. I didn’t think they’d cross the country by foot—”

  “And bike.”

  “And truck,” he said with a sad grin, “but now I’ve got to sort this mess out and I have to come clean to my wife. I have to get over the fact that every facet about you that I hated from the start, is because I was in your shoes, literally. I just have to figure out how to tell—”

  “You’re going to stay with Jamie?” I asked him, hating myself for that question.

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s not fair to Frankie, but I have to tell Jamie without screwing everything up for all of us. We’re so close to having things safe here, but I can’t keep this secret.”

  “What will you do about Frankie?” I asked him.

  “Tell her the truth.”

  The door opened and I turned to see Mel coming out with two plates full of apple pie, so thick that the filling was oozing out the sides. It smelled heavenly.

  “The truth about what?” she asked, handing plates to both of us.

  “Grownup stuff,” Steve said with a grunt.

  “Dad, I’m sixteen in a month. How much more grownup can it be than what I’ve already seen?”

  “Touché,” he said, “still, it’s personal.”

  “Oh…. Gotcha. When Danielle and Jeremy had ‘personal’ stuff to talk about, it was always sex. Those two would sneak away every time Dick wasn’t watching. You two aren’t having sex, are you?”

  I snapped my head back and she grinned, despite turning slightly red in the face.

  “What? They’re grownups!” she said, a little indignant at the look I was giving her.

  “They’re just kids,” I growled, adopting Steve’s tone, “and me and your father aren’t having sex together. With each other…”

  “They’re eighteen and nineteen,” she said, ignoring how red in the face we both were getting. “What age is it ok to be a grown up nowadays?”

  “Eighteen and nineteen is old enough, but you’re fifteen and you don’t even have a boyfriend,” Steve told her. “Or at least if you do, I’d better not find out. It’s been a few days since I shot somebody.”

  “Daaaaaaaaddddddddyyyyyyyyyyyy!” Mel went back inside.

  “Is your daughter like that?” Steve asked me.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been around in a while. I hope so. You’ve got a good kid there, despite her sense of humor.”

  “Thanks. By the way, Dick…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You kind of look purty in this light,” he said with a snicker.

  He stood and went in the house, and I heard voices rise up, and him teasing Beth that her cooking was good enough to tempt Satan out of Hell. Giggles. Laughter. After a while, I ate the pie, but it had gone cold by the time I was done. I wasn’t the only one with a heavy heart. We were all suffering to a degree here. Everyone but Mel. Jamie and me because of obvious reasons, Steve, Courtney. What a mess.

  41

  The materials to make thermite can vary, but what had been procured was just about perfect for our needs. One of the farms had a small metal shop where the former owner had a metal lathe and a ton of aluminum shavings in a bin, waiting to be recycled. Also, in the shop was a lot of square steel tubing for making farm implements. The thing about the tubing was it wasn’t treated, and it had rusted. It was from that and numerous other farm implements, that they’d collected the rust flakes. Both the rust and aluminum had been ground down as much as possible in a mortar and pestle, into a fine powder.

  In fact, I hadn’t counted on the particles being so fine. Many idle hands had taken turns turning both the rust and aluminum from big pieces into small pieces. Mel had told me that many of the ladies had been working nonstop at it, taking turns when Steve had told them what he thought I had in mind for it. In the barn, in one of the cupboards over Steve’s tool bench, was a box of fireworks from when Mel was younger. A brick of sparklers had been sitting unused. It was almost too easy and perfect. I had at least five pounds of thermite material and I hoped it would be enough. If it wasn’t, things were going to be interesting anyway.

  “What do you want to hold the powder in?” Beth asked when I asked her to be in on it.

  “Do you have metal coffee cans? Or the larger soup cans?” I asked.

  “Big cans? You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well darn, those big number 10 cans are what Mr. O’Sullivan uses for his food storage. I could probably scare up several dozens of those.”

  “I think we’ll need at least one, and at least three big soup cans about this size,” I told her, showing her with my hands.

  “Oh yeah, I got some that’ll probably work.”

  The dinner dishes had been cleared and the pyrotechnics had been brought in. I was still stiff and sore, most of my body now a camouflage of colors, but I was ready for action.

  “Grenade casing?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah,” I told him, “but we’ll need some tin snips to trim the lids down some, too.”

  “Good thing I saved those lids then, isn’t it?” Beth asked Steve, a smug smile on her face.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he grinned back.

  “How do you want the lids trimmed?” Steve asked.

  “Just enough to fall inside of the container. Doesn’t need to be far. We need to poke a hole in the top for the sparklers, too.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “A few books of matches for a timer,” I told him.

  He nodded and in a few minutes, Steve’s men had everything at the table. Steve started trimming the lids and cut the wire handles off the sparklers, lining things up next to me. I was checking the mix on the thermite, trying to eyeball if it was 50/50 and decided that it probably was. It wasn’t an exact science, but there were a lot of different varieties of thermite, and some were more useful for welding than what I was trying to do. The mix I had would be okay. I didn’t want to make a bomb, just melt some stuff.

  I used a canning funnel to pour scoops of the powder into each can, leaving an inch open at the top. I took one of the new lids and dropped it in.

  “Forgot the hole,” Mel said.

  “Shit,” I mumbled and in the end, I had to upend the soup can over the container to fish everything out.

  “I’ll punch holes in them,” Crowder said, leaving, and I started refilling the cans from the large bowl.

  By the time I was finished, he’
d come back in with four lids, all holes punched, all sides trimmed. Like before, I’d filled the soup cans to an inch from the top and put the lids on them. The number ten can, I filled to within two inches and then dropped the lid in. It wasn’t quite trimmed enough, so I hammered it in with my fist slightly, being careful not to shred my hands on the sharp edges. It went in with little fuss after that.

  “Sparklers in the holes?” Mel asked, and I nodded.

  It was like when Maggie had brought home arts and crafts. I could remember one instance, where she’d had something that was made from straws and bows. Stick figures? It was like everything else in my memories. Fuzzy, foggy, and often it came out better in nightmares.

  “What are the matches for?” Jamie asked.

  I looked up. She had rejoined us, and she seemed more at ease than she had been the entire day.

  “More of a timer than anything else. The sparklers will work to that effect, till they burn down to the thermite. We strike a match, wedge the book of matches over the edge of the sparkler, put the match in the other end. When the match burns down, it lights the book of matches, lighting the sparkler. I’m hoping if we can get in unseen, it will give us a good two minutes to set up the four thermite grenades and get out of there before the fireworks start.”

  “But they are fireworks,” Mel said, in a sleepy voice.

  “Pretty much,” Steve told her, leaning over and hugging her.

  The green monster leaped to the forefront of my brain, and I had to fight it back. It was his family, not mine. God, what a mess I was in.

  “So, we just wait for three am?” Courtney asked me.

  “I want to get a few hours of sleep in before we go. If we leave here at 3:00am, we can hit the camp by 3:45am, just when the night shift is getting tired. You guys are sure that they don’t park the armor inside?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. They can’t. There’s no room. It isn’t a big camp,” Crowder said. “Maybe twenty acres. Most of it is under roof for their electronics projects or for housing people.”

  “The components that they are forcing people to make?” I asked them.

  I got nods all around.

  “Lots of lights?” I asked, knowing some of this already from Courtney.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “Most of them are on poles up high. The thing is, they burn out fast, running on those big diesel generators. I don't think they keep a proper voltage.”

  “Any of you good with a slingshot?” I asked.

  I got blank looks all around.

  “Anybody here have a slingshot?” I asked.

  Mel raised her hand slowly, and I smiled. Everything was falling into place.

  The alarm had interrupted a nightmare, but that was par for the course. Courtney had fallen asleep in the chair, her feet up on the bed. I nudged her and she awoke with a start. I put a finger to my lips to make sure she didn’t wake everyone, and after dressing, we slipped downstairs. Immediately, the smell of coffee assaulted my nostrils and I looked around. Everyone from earlier was sitting at the kitchen table, apparently waiting.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Steve said with a grin.

  “So you couldn’t wake us up to join the party?” I asked.

  “No, you two are going to be going all ninja here soon. Figured you needed the rest. We’ve been monitoring the camp by radio. Still have a couple of people out there. The camp seems like the mobilization was a drill, or they’ve changed their minds. It’s all confusing as hell, plus we’re getting pieces of intel from Texas about the New Caliphate attacking an Air Force base.”

  “Hard to say,” I said with a yawn, not knowing anything about the New Caliphate.

  Beth walked out of the kitchen with two plates. Toast and eggs. Not a lot, but enough to whet my appetite.

  “Thanks,” Courtney said, taking her plate, “Any coffee left?”

  “Yeah, I’d kill for some,” I agreed, yawning.

  “In the carafe, over there,” she nodded to the table.

  We ate quickly, and I took the wrist rocket that Mel had left on the table before she’d gone to bed. We suited up in new vests and grabbed the guns we’d been using, and we were ready to go.

  “Have your scouts pull out slowly, and watch for any additional NATO forces or other movement,” I told Steve.

  “Already done.”

  “Ok, looks like we’re about set. I’ll see you folks in the morning,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Jamie said, and Steve gave her a sharp look.

  She noticed it and looked back at me.

  “We will. I’ll keep your deputies back, Steve. This mission is about sabotage and sapping their lines. No big firefights, if we can help it.”

  “What if something goes wrong and they give chase?” Steve asked.

  “Then we spring the trap that we’ve been burying around the countryside,” I said, smiling.

  “You almost hope they follow you back, don’t you?” Jamie asked.

  “Depends on them. If we hit them hard enough, they can’t do much without attacking us with civilian trucks.”

  “Yeah, that didn’t go so well for them last time,” Crowder said, chuckling.

  “It didn’t for us either,” Steve reminded him, and the chuckling cut off immediately.

  I didn’t really need a driver, but the last thing I wanted to do was have to remember directions back to the farm. These men had been living and working either at the camp or the farm long after the grid had gone down. In a pinch, they’d be two more guns, proficient to some degree. I knew Courtney was an OK shot, not as good as the deputies, but I trusted her. I knew she’d have my back, and she needed some payback. For the first time ever, I’d met someone who had worse nightmares than I did. Killing somebody wouldn’t make mine go away, but for her, revenge might. Or it could make it worse. Still, she wanted this, and I needed somebody at my back that wouldn’t run out on me.

  “Nervous?” Courtney asked.

  “Always,” I admitted.

  “I’m not, for some reason. I thought I would be, but it feels like just one more thing to do.”

  I pondered that. Maybe it was possible she’d already accepted her own death. I remembered reading about Samurais who adopted a mindset like that. It took away their hesitation. If they already considered themselves dead, they would be fearless and would be able to fight without flinching. Emotionless battle masters, ready to sacrifice themselves as needed to win. I hoped she wasn’t thinking like that, but I could see how it might be useful. I’d been there at one point in my life, but that had been when I’d given up hope of ever seeing Mary and Maggie again. I wasn’t the same man that I was a year ago.

  “I’m not even going in and I’m scared shitless,” Crowder said.

  “That’s cuz you probably shit your pants, by the smell of it,” a female deputy said, punching him on the arm.

  “Hey, easy on the gun arm, Frankie. I might need it later,” he said in a falsetto voice.

  Oh shit, this was the other woman. Frankie.

  “Yeah, for pulling your head out of your ass,” she told him in a stern voice, but I looked up to see that she was smiling.

  We were in an old truck with a crew cab. We’d chosen it because it was the second most quiet vehicle the farm had on hand, and the quietest one was already out there, playing mobile scout, all blacked out, with the drivers wearing NVGs.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked in the same falsetto voice, and everyone groaned.

  “You just want to blow stuff up and shoot some bad guys,” Courtney said quietly.

  “Well, that sounds like a good way to start off the day. Besides the coffee. Can’t go shoot bad guys and blow shit up without coffee.”

  “You’re a trip,” Frankie said. “Is it true, what Mel said about you?”

  “I don’t know what Mel said about me.”

  I knew who she was because of Steve, but I was probably the only one in the truck who knew that I knew. Courtney wouldn’t have known, but most of Steve’s men would.
I hoped he told Jamie soon. Still, her coming along gave me a chance to look her over. She was in her late twenties or early thirties. Younger than Steve or I; probably closer in age to Courtney. I couldn’t make out more than a blocky shape because she was wearing a vest, the same as the rest of us.

  “You’re some kind of Spec Ops badass. You had to go underground in Chicago, literally, because you killed too many bad guys and they wanted to get even.”

  “Sounds about right so far,” I told her, “but there were no cops around to stop the rapists and murders.”

  “So you did? The same way you did at the gate?”

  “Pretty much. Except for a couple of times where I had to get creative.”

  “The trap house? It sounds like you like blowing shit up. I was on the detail digging out your Oklahoma City Bomber brew and burying the barrels.”

  “I learned demolitions a long time ago. Some from training, some from a couple of special forces dudes who were into specialty ops.”

  “Really? Like what?” Crowder asked.

  “Well, there’s this one guy who went by King. I don’t even know if that’s his first or last name. Just King. Big as a damned house and as mean as a rabid grizzly bear. He was a master of guerrilla warfare. Between him and a guy I worked with a long time ago named John, I learned a ton of dirty tricks to make things go boom.”

  “John…” Courtney said, “Isn’t he the guy that…”

  “Yeah,” I told her.

  “What’s that?” Crowder asked.

  “At the trout farm where y’all sprung me from, they thought I was John Norton. I know him, did some work and training with him, but I’m not him, and I haven’t heard from him in fifteen years or more.”

  “Why would they think that?” Frankie asked.

  “No clue. Most of the folks I knew from the way back are dead. King, Sandra, Mike, James, Martin… John is the only one I know who’s still alive. Retired. Last I heard, he was going to be a preacher or something in Alabama. His kid was growing up to be a missionary. Last I heard, he was.”

  “You stayed in touch?” Courtney asked me, surprised.

  “No, but I hear things. The list of guys like us is a pretty small one.”