"Try not to worry it," Smith-Jones said. "I assure you in a few days you will not even notice it but you will find your life is infinitely easier. You need only submit to a scan and you will be passed by any legitimate security check point."
Gonzalez didn't know if he liked this or not.
"It cannot be removed except by a special procedure," Smith-Jones said. "Any attempt to remove it will-
"Why would I try to remove it?" Gonzalez asked. "What do you take me for?"
"A loyal American, sir. I was just explaining to you that if you attempt - or someone else attempts - to remove it, the signal will change and set off an alarm in the scanners. We have made this fact well-known so that if you are taken prisoner, it will do our enemies no good to try and remove the chip and implant the devices in themselves."
"Of course," he said. "Makes perfect sense."
Smith and Jones informed Gonzalez that they would bivouac outside in a special Quonset Hut. They asked him not to enter the hut for any reason whatsoever but to contact them for any reason whatsoever and gave him a secure frequency walkie talkie that was always monitored.
And so that is how Hector Gonzalez took over Albert Smythe's home.
It really made no difference to him where he stayed. This was as good as any, he figured, as he walked through the premises taking note of the sparse furnishings and the simple, almost rudimentary carpentry around window frames and doors. The living room was the most congenial place with some standard furniture, a desk with a computer and a fireplace that could take a four-foot log. There were several hundred books lined up on shelves and he glanced through them, absently, not recognizing much other than a few classical names. Dostoevsky. Hemmingway. Shakespeare. The odor he noticed was from the biofuel that Albert manufactured and used for heating. It was a cross between french fries and chicken and sometimes a whiff of cod. The house was a marvel of self-sufficiency. The two security agents told him that a large generator truck with thousands of gallons of fuel would be arriving in the morning to provide backup. They had discovered that Albert's generator and diesel engine in the shed had somehow been ruined during the initial searches. The fuel pump on the engine was missing, the generator terminal leads had been broken off and the transfer switch had been ripped off the wall. There was no one to fix it so it was simply locked up and left.
The house was all on one floor with no basement, just a concrete footing and support wall forming a two-foot crawl space just big enough for pipes and wires and raccoons. It was vented and the vents were large enough to fit through if a man had to repair something.
Gonzalez took his flashlight and walked around the perimeter of the building, checking under the house through the grates.
"What are you doing?" Smith-Jones demanded, catching Gonzalez off-guard and making him start. He turned and saw shorty, the black Napoleon fondling his big black gun and flexing his nostrils which expelled two streams of smoke into the cold night air.
"Just checking," Gonzalez said. "What's it to you?"
Smith-Jones stepped a little closer and studied Gonzalez's face. Hector watched the eyes moving. The man reminded him of an ape but he never in a million years would have admitted it was some form of prejudice to think so. Gonzalez wasn't prejudiced. FEMA and Rev. Wright had explained to everyone just who was capable of prejudice and who wasn't, who was a bigot and who couldn't be. Mexicans cannot be bigots, even if they hate blacks and blacks cannot be bigots even if they hate everybody because bigotry is a one-way street.
"That bin checked three times by them Homeland crackers and we dun it after that," he said. "You ain't got to worry, beaner; we lookin after business. Evyting cool..."
Back inside, he felt a little awkward as he surveyed what was obviously Albert's old bedroom. The bed was made up and there was a dresser with a few of the expected accouterments and a closet that held several shirts, a pair of pants and a jacket, all of which were thick with dust. He looked around for more sheets and blankets but found none. He shrugged and lay down.
He tried to imagine the twisted labyrinth of Albert Smythe's mind but he couldn't find a way in. No wife, no family, apparently, no friends. A true lone wolf.
"Remind you of anyone?" he asked himself out loud.
His own voice startled him.
They would find Albert Smythe if he wasn't already dead and that would be the end of it; Albert Smythe and everyone like him. Every damn cracker in the country that believed he had a right to do whatever he wanted, to hate anybody he chose, to cling to his wretched kind in the name of some perverted religious dogma or out of a predisposition to Nazism. Hector Gonzalez didn't know all the details, but he'd read a bit about the Second World War. He knew it was about white supremacy and America's minority soldiers had saved the world while most of the white boys stayed home and then took all the credit for victory. Pigs. Fucking pigs. This government was big and strong and dedicated to the cause of justice, not just to feathering the nests of its racially acceptable friends. The White Terror was coming to an end once and for all, and this country that had been stolen from Mexico in the first place, would revert to its rightful owners. The blacks could stay if they behaved, but who had the muscle in the voting booth, now? We will do whatever is necessary...whatever is necessary..
Yet, he had been a little surprised when they took the FEMA class to Beach Grove where they were admitted into a vast prison camp through a series of security gates by armed men without rank insignia or any other identification. The camp had been set up to hold enemies of the United States and they would be brought here and processed and kept out of circulation until their individual cases could be heard.
"There are no gas chambers here," the Colonel guiding them joked. "Contrary to what you may have heard from the tin foil hats."
It wasn't a cheerful place but it was a lot better than this trash deserved.
He did not remember falling asleep.
PART 1, CHAPTER
It wasn't cold. Check that. It wasn't too cold. It was bearable, like a fall night. A sweater or a jacket and you'd be fine. You wouldn't sleep outside in it though, except maybe camping or something. Did people still go camping? Tents and sleeping bags and preserved food and bugs...Probably. If you were out in the woods tonight, you'd close your tent flap and climb into the bag and close it up over your head. You'd feel the heat from your own body and breath trapped in the down. But not here. Here, there was no way to get warm. Not uncomfortable was possible; warm was not. Cover up and you couldn't breathe. And it was dark. It was a kind of dark that very few people ever experience. There was a cave somewhere in Indiana, a long, dark cave with a kind of stream in it. You could walk through the cave to the point where it would become dark, so dark that there was no measurable light. Absolute dark, they said There were blind fish in the stream who did not know what light or dark was. He could do something about the dark, if he wanted. He could turn on a light. But that just seemed to fill the room with a gloomy twilight and it showed him the limits of his tomb. With the light off, he floated in a cool absolute dark until he fell asleep. He trusted his body to wake him at four thirty a.m. as it had for several years. He could feel Bolivia's urgency through the morning air, even if she was quiet. He smelled the coffee after a while, boiling on the stove and drank his first cup in complete silence without turning on any lights, listening to the morning arrive, planning the day, the wonderful too-short day that awaited him. Ludwig would be standing at the door, looking at him, demanding he get at it. He'd call the big Shepherd who would slink over and leap up and lick his face and seem to smile. He'd bury his face in the dog's thick ruff and inhale deeply.
"Okay, ya bastard" he'd say and the dog would nearly break down the door to get out into the day...
When he woke, his face was wet. He half remembered dreaming about the dog and thought maybe he'd been crying. He couldn't really go over in any detail what had happened in his mind because his mind wouldn't allow it. He saw Ludwig walking towards him...he heard the
shots...he remembered repeatedly pulling the trigger of his .45...blood-spattered skull parts flying...the smell of the kerosene and the gurgling and choking as he poured it down Monteith's throat. Then the screaming...then the dog walking towards him...then the shots...
All he could think of was Bolivia and her swollen udder, her pain if they weren't milking her. She could get mastitis. And the goats would be alarmed because he hadn't thrown down the hay. The big rolls of field hay were almost all gone and each morning he threw down square bales which the animals would rummage through all day. She was probably bellowing already, calling him.
Now he had to turn on the light.
The eight by twenty foot room appeared when he turned on a small LED. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face.
"Christ," he said out loud.
First he checked the battery levels and made certain the fans were working properly. Voltage was dropping in the intake fan battery and he switched it over to a fresh source. He had two replacement fans but he wasn't planning to ever need them.
The air coming in was cold and fresh and he stood by the opening and breathed it. Then he went to the small table at the south end of the room and flicked on the six-inch black-and white screen. He was able to view the area around his location, though the fiber optic camera could not move. It was hidden in a pile of debris and pointed back at him with a panoramic shot. He saw the Axtell windmill grinding away in the breeze and the litter of boards and rubble directly over his tomb. He had watched the two trackers with their dog as they found the cats he had buried for them. Both old males had been starving when he found them and he killed them quickly and painlessly before laying them under the boards. The rat restaurant idea was a pure bonus. There didn't seem to be anybody in the vicinity. He flicked another switch and a small speaker crackled and came to life. It continued to hum as the wind rubbed across the microphone. He listened for a long time but heard nothing more than forest sounds.
It stood to reason they weren't waiting for him. Why would they? If they suspected he had an underground shelter and they suspected where it was he suspected they'd blow the fucking thing to hell first and see after if any of the body parts were his.
Getting out was more difficult than getting in. The room was six feet high, twelve feet under ground. It was covered with six feet of heavy clay and rocks and boards and branches and dead cats on top of that. He had to climb twelve feet up a thirty inch steel culvert to a trap door that had to be opened with a small bottle jack welded to the culvert. The jack lifted the hundred pound door to the point where he could push it all the way open. Then he would climb out. He'd lower the trap door back down with it's montage of dirt and rocks and scatter the area with brush, making it all but invisible. On top of that, it was behind a large dead stump he'd pulled into place and half buried to look like it had died there. It was near the tree line and that added a kind of protection on one side. You'd have to be awfully lucky to stumble on it and if you did, you'd have to spend a few moments looking before any incongruities in the scene became apparent. A dog might stop there and sniff around and paw the dirt but he'd have to claw through rock to get to the steel door. It wasn't foolproof but it was sufficient, he thought. So long as the situation remained above suspicion, he was safe. No casual hiker would figure anything out from the detritus around the old house foundation. But if they came looking, if they knew what they were looking for they'd figure it out in an hour. They'd trace the mic cable or the fiber-optic line to where they dove straight down into the earth or they'd scrutinize the Axtell and discover the small generator disguised as a broken, antique pump attached to the axel or uncover the cables tucked into the angle iron struts and disappearing into the earth. From there it wouldn't be long until they brought out metal detectors and found the hatch and then dropped a couple of grenades down before slamming it shut for ever. The best he could hope for was that if he was inside when they found the tomb, they would try to talk him out or force some kind of surrender. It would give him time. He could still get away if they weren't too widely deployed around the site. The tomb had a tunnel leading off it to the west, that meandered to a vertical thirty inch culvert that rose to the surface one hundred and sixty feet away. A hundred and sixty feet is a long way to crawl in a thirty inch culvert twelve feet under ground. When he arrived at the exit, it could be blocked or flooded or there could be a porcupine or a grizzly bear living in it. Well, probably not a grizzly bear. They might find the exit hole in the main tomb wall before he could get out and pump gas in or use a flame thrower or set off a torpedo of some kind. There were so many things to go wrong, so many ways to kill him, but first there were so many ways to hunt him down and then to discover him, the killing was almost anti-climactic after that.
But Albert emerged from the hatch into the freezing, bright January day with no one as witness and nothing to indicate his presence after he scattered fresh debris. He walked north until he found other tracks that he could fold into. Then he made a detour over the limestone ridge, a full three miles around, and found himself back on the edge of the woods, three hundred and fifty yards from his house.
He looked in vain for Bolivia and the goats but the barn was partially obstructed and their yard was out of view. They would have had to be standing at the fence looking for him to be seen from his present vantage. It made him think of Ludwig and he started to cry. He couldn't stop for a few moments and his breathing was heavy and out of rhythm. He strained to hear even her bellowing or anything at all but they were probably down at the far end of their pasture snuffling through the snow for grass. Surely the idiots would have realized how valuable they were and fed them. His chest contracted with sudden anxiety as he imagined them not being fed and just standing in the barn, perplexed and unhappy, unable to understand what was happening around them or to do anything about it. They were complete captives and if somebody didn't look after them they died of hunger and thirst. His hatred for the men occupying his house welled in him and he half thought about going after them right then.
That's when he saw an armed man, short but heavy set, walking a perimeter about one hundred yards from the house. The snow was thin and dry so his passage wasn't hindered much, but Albert could tell he wasn't used to it because he stepped too carefully and stopped to look around and stomp the ground and worry his gloves. That put Smith-Jones #1 no more than two hundred and fifty yards from Albert's 30.06, an easy shot in the clear, cold, still air with the Ruger braced on a tree limb and the target upright and black against a white background, but he let him pass.
But he made sure it was not too quiet. He saw a fair buck wander into rifle range and paw at the snow. He watched it for a while and when it had come as close as he thought it would before it detected him, he threw a rock at it. The rock fell short but the buck started and leapt across the field and the short man with the rifle watched it run and looked around fearfully at the wall of brown, leafless trees but in the end concluded that the buck had caught sight of him and bolted before he could shoot it down. That is the story he told his partner before turning over the watch. At night, they pulled the patrols in to about fifty feet and Albert watched while Smith-Jones #2 patrolled less and less and finally spent the long hours from midnight to four a.m., standing out of the wind in the barn, occasionally going out to make a patrol. Albert stayed in his tree all night, unaffected by the cold because he had prepared for it, knowing somehow that he would have to do this. He was totally covered in winter wear, able to withstand the temperatures, for a while at least. He even had sustenance with him and could have remained there a second day if his muscles hadn't cramped. As it was, he'd been able to see a day in the life of his enemies and he decided to come back in a few days and see if anything had changed and if their routine was the same.
He disconnected an hour before sunrise and trudged back to his tomb, taking almost two hours to go half a mile through the roundabout trails that he was fairly certain would even defeat the dogs.
; It was bright and sunny when he got back to the hatch and he didn't want to go inside. He hated it down there. He hated the artificial light and the terror of suffocation and the stink of his own sweat and shit and piss. He tried to empty the five gallon pail every day and so far had been successful. He would push it up the ladder ahead of him, praying it wouldn't fall and then he'd set it on the ground, climb out after it, drag it into the bush and dump it. He's take a quart of bleach and water mix from his coat and rinse out the bucket and then take it back down. It was the worst part of living underground. He thought he could take the isolation and the darkness and the MREs day after day and giving himself a whore's bath twice a week and the terror that the hatch wouldn't open and the memories; but not the stink of his own shit and piss. He'd set it up as best he could.
He didn't want to go back down but he had to. The temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees and hovered now around zero. He couldn't stay out much longer without starting to suffer from it and he knew he had no capacity to deal with illness or injury beyond some very rudimentary first aid and some outdated vancomycin and some Cipro he'd kept from his trucking days. He also knew that he had to keep clean, no matter what, no matter how. He had to force himself to bathe, to shave, to brush his teeth...to stay sane during prolonged solitary confinement, which is what this was.
He pulled the hatch closed and climbed down the ladder and into the pitch black room. A wall switch opened a small LED and the dark shadows reappeared. It was fifty five degrees in the room. Always. Outside temperatures could vary by a hundred degrees, but it was always fifty five degrees down here. The building was made of treated six by six timbers, laid across each other at the corners, cabin fashion on a six-inch thick reinforced concrete slab. He'd run a double bead of silicone between each course and then drilled them together every twenty four inches with foot-long lag screws. Then he'd coated the outside with heavy tar and insulation and backfilled with the dense, clay from the excavation, running the tractor over and over the dirt, packing it down as hard as possible both to keep out water and prevent settlement which would be a dead give-away, with the emphasis on dead. The roof was the same six by six timbers sandwiched against each other, screwed to the walls and then covered with a thirty millimeter pond liner that draped down a foot all the way around. There was just no place for it to leak, except around the vulnerabilities of the entrances and the conduit that brought the cables in from the camera, the microphone and the windmill. He'd been able to haul in the treated timbers over time without attracting any attention. Even the thirty-four inch culverts had come through a trucker he knew who specialized in stolen cargo. He'd made the deal and driven two hundred and sixty miles return, ten times with his trailer and pickup and hauled them back two at a time. He installed them immediately and no one was ever the wiser. He'd worried one time when the local assessor had shown up with a recent satellite photo of his place wanting to see the greenhouse which had not been present for the previous tax assessment. But the photo showed nothing extraordinary; just a backhoe cleaning up around an old home site and even that was blurry.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 11
