When lunch was completed and the cooking equipment was cleaned and stored, they filed back into the van, anxious to be underway. The excitement was building. Travis was sure now that by the following morning they would reach home.
It was late afternoon; the group had been on the road for about four hours when they found themselves traveling through an area of well-to-do farms and ranches. Each homestead consisted of at least forty acres or so, and the houses that could be seen from the road were large and expensive. Suddenly, as they reached a rise in the road, they heard shots—short staccato bursts indicative of a firefight.
Travis slowed the van and listened. “That’s not a trigger-happy deer hunter. That’s somebody in trouble—I’d bet on it.” He turned back to the others as he stopped the van. “Whatever’s happening is taking place on the backside of that hill.”
“You have not had enough of people shooting at you?” said the sensei. Travis just looked at him. The sensei sighed exasperatedly “Very well, we will have a look.”
Travis told Christina and Carlos to keep their guns ready and their eyes open, then he and the sensei took their M16s and headed for the top of the ridge. Rapid bursts of automatic weapons shattered the still afternoon, and as they neared their vantage point, they could hear men shouting to each other.
They reached the crest, and cautiously peered down through the sparse woods at the confrontation. Below them were a large ranch house and a barn, enclosed by an attractive four-foot rock wall, accessed by a large wrought-iron gate in the front. It was a lovely home by any standard, but the house and its occupants were under siege. One group of attackers was moving in from the front while another group worked their way around back. They were using the wall for protection while they poured round after round into the building. There were signs that the defending forces were suffering. Several of the windows in the home were shattered, and there was a body on the corner of the porch.
Suddenly a child, perhaps four or five, burst from the door of a small guesthouse about a hundred feet from the main structure. She was quickly followed by a girl in her late teens; they were running for the larger house. The two must have been trapped in the smaller building when the shooting began, and they were trying to reach the safety of their home and family. The older girl snatched up the little one and continued running. Suddenly, a door was thrown open in the main house and a large man came flying out, his head down, his eyes ahead like a fullback going for the winning point. The men behind the rock fence saw them and began firing. Rounds kicked up the dirt around the man’s feet, but he just kept going. Even the girls started picking up fire as bullets zinged and hammered the ground around them. They were only about fifteen feet apart when the man was hit in the thigh; it spun him and he fell, but he was back on his feet again in a second, lumbering toward the girls, oblivious to the blood streaming down his leg.
Travis didn’t need to say a thing: He and the sensei raised their guns at the same time and opened up on the men behind the wall, who were in plain sight to them. In seconds, four of the ten men below were dead and the rest were scrambling for protection, having given up on both the girls and the man. The fellow grabbed the two girls and raced back to the house, pausing only for a split second to look up at Travis.
Travis shouted to the sensei as he fired, “Go back and get Chris and Carlos. Bring a handful of grenades and more ammo. I’ll hold them ’til you get back.”
Without a word, the sensei was gone, silent as a falling leaf. Travis continued peppering the attackers with short bursts to conserve ammunition until the sensei returned. He fired and moved continuously, to give the impression that there was more than one assailant, and to keep them from nailing him down.
It seemed only a minute or two and the sensei was back with Christina and Carlos at his side. “Okay, this is the situation,” Travis said as he grabbed a magazine and reloaded. “We’ve got four men behind that brush pile down there and two or three in that stand of trees at the corner of the wall. There’s another group of maybe six or eight working their way around back—that’s who you hear firing now. Sensei, take Carlos and work your way around high on this hill, without making contact until you’re above those guys in the rear of the house. Don’t let them see you, and don’t open up until you’re in position if you can help it. No need to get into a firefight; take two or three grenades and lob them. If there’s anything left, clean it up with your rifles. Chris and I will take the ones in front. Okay, move.”
Travis continued to fire, keeping the men below pinned down while Carlos and the sensei worked around the hillside to their position above the other assailants. The house was still receiving gunfire from the men in the back, who were bunched up in two groups behind the wall. They were confident, certain they were safe and secure, unaware of Carlos and the sensei creeping through the woods a hundred feet above them.
Travis waited for five minutes, then took a deep breath and turned to Christina. “Okay, let’s get ’em.” He took a couple of the grenades Christina held. “I’m going to put one in those trees and one in that brush pile. Anything that comes out of the trees, you shoot. I’ll take the brush pile.”
She threw the bolt on the M16 expertly and tossed her hair back. “Let’s do it.”
Travis still had a little of his sandlot quarterback arm. That and a little luck put the grenades right on top of his targets. The deafening explosions were followed by screams; two men came out of the woods, firing as they ran. Christina got one of them. A couple more scrambled from the woodpile—one already limping. They hadn’t gone thirty feet when Travis took them both. At that moment there were twin explosions from the back of the house near the wall.
Carlos and the sensei sat on the hill above the men by the rock wall and waited for Travis’ signal. When the grenades went off out front, they each took one and tossed it downward. The angle of the incline caused the grenades to roll down to the wall and stop right next to the antagonists.
Carlos threw his grenade at the group on the left and watched it roll down, hit one of them in the leg, bounce against the wall, and settle. The man looked at it in disbelief, then up at Carlos, who smiled and gave him a short wave. Realization dawned on the fellow about the same time the grenade went off. A second later it was followed by the explosion of the sensei’s grenade. There were no survivors.
The one man who had eluded Christina’s gun paused on the ridge above the house long enough to take a good look at who he was certain must be hired mercenaries. As Travis moved out into the open and shouted down at the house, the hair on the back of his neck prickled. His eyes were drawn to a man standing alone on the ridge above him, about a hundred and fifty yards away—a big man with long dark hair, staring hard at Travis and Christina.
Reynolds took one more look at the people below, then turned and headed for the jeep he had hidden in the woods. The colonel would want to know about this development.
After getting an all clear from the sensei, Travis yelled again, “Hello! You, down there in the house, we’re friends. Hold your fire!”
The front door opened slowly, and the man who Travis had protected earlier emerged, gun in hand, his leg bandaged. “Get your people in the open,” he shouted back, “hands on the butts of your weapons—no sudden moves!”
Travis called to the sensei, and after a quick perimeter check for any enemy survivors, the four of them joined up at the front of the open gates. The man who had watched from the house waved Travis and his people in.
When they reached the porch, he said, “I don’t know who you are, mister, but I think I’ll just call you the Lone Ranger. I’m in your debt—my family is in your debt.” The man limped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Ben Harcourt, Circuit Judge for Montgomery County—or at least I was—until about seven or eight weeks ago. This is my house and my family you just saved.”
Travis introduced himself and his companions, who were ushered into the living room by the judge. There they met his wife, their two da
ughters, and an assortment of help from cooks to groundskeepers; the people who comprised Harcourt’s sparse defenses. If Travis hadn’t stumbled onto them, they wouldn’t have had a chance.
Judge Harcourt insisted that they have supper and spend the night at his home. After some refusing and more insisting, the group finally accepted the offer. Travis and the sensei went back for the van, accompanied by one of the gardeners, who was to show the way into the property.
When they reached the van, Todd ran silently to Travis and wrapped his arms around him in a bear hug. “Hey, little buddy, I’m okay,” Travis said as he held the boy. “Everybody’s okay.”
The preacher looked out at his friend from his seat in the van. “Hot damn, son, I been as nervous as a housefly at a lizard convention. What the hell happened? Where is everybody?”
“Everybody’s just fine,” Travis repeated. “We ran into some bad guys; they lost, we won—another page out of the Old West.” Travis smiled and turned to the sensei. “Let’s go, Tonto.”
“Tonto?”
“Never mind, just a joke,” Travis said, chuckling to himself as he got into the van.
Once they were all in, the gardener showed them the road that led to the house. An hour later, everyone was sitting in the large living room, drinks in hand. The preacher was propped up on the sofa with pillows all around him and a whiskey and water in his big paw. The judge and his wife sat across from Travis, Christina, and the sensei. Carlos and Todd shared a divan on the far side of the room, while Ra was afforded the luxury of the cool, hardwood floor next to them. Judge Harcourt had begun to explain the unique political circumstances existing in Arkansas. Harcourt, no particular friend of Colonel Rockford, was detailing the colonel’s political aspirations and his own theories on the reign of terror that the survivors in Arkansas were experiencing:
“The man isn’t interested in the due process of a democratic political system. He doesn’t want to run Arkansas—he wants to own it. This country was established, and has survived for over three hundred years on the concept of certain basic, intrinsic, freedoms. We’ve overcome depression, civil wars, and inept leadership because the principals of the country were strong, as are the innate values of the system.
“Rockford wants to throw all that away. He wants to be a new-world Ghengis Khan, and he wants to make Arkansas his own version of Little Mongolia. Sure we had a shake up. Things are a mess. There is little or no federal government, and I know we’ll be on our own for a while, but that’s no reason to depart from our basic ideals. He’s using this catastrophe as an excuse to usurp a state from the United States of America, and if he’s successful here, there’s no stopping him from moving into Oklahoma, Missouri, or Tennessee. His capricious applications of eminent domain, which is, in essence, stealing property from people for his new government, has got a lot of people frightened and angry.”
The judge paused. “I’ll admit that I sympathize with some of Rockford’s philosophies. He’s right that bad judgment and an unwillingness to actually apply existing laws and regulations had taken us to the brink of socio-political collapse prior to this disaster. We’d been trying to accommodate the masses with failing welfare systems that taught the people it was easier to take than produce. We constantly treated the symptoms and never really treated the disease. Our borders bulged with people who couldn’t make it somewhere else, then found that they couldn’t make it here, either, because America wasn’t a panacea for poverty and ignorance. It was just another country that, at first, had done better than most.
“I agree with Rockford that criminals in the old system got away with murder—literally. Justice was never sure and very rarely swift, and culminated only after every conceivable loop-holed appeal had been exhausted. We need to alter that. We have to change some things to fit the times in which we now live. Laws for these times need to be simple, exact, and clear; justice swift and sure, but only after due process has been served by a court of law—not a group of vigilantes with a rope and a tree.
“Like I said, I’m not at odds with all Rockford’s ideas. It’s his methods I don’t agree with.”
Harcourt took a sip of his drink, then continued. “As for what happened today, I have my own theory with which a number of my constituents agree. The majority of Rockford’s opponents seem to have health problems, mostly trouble with foreign objects in their systems—like shrapnel, or bullets. Or, they leave a note about how they can’t go on, then shoot themselves several times after cutting their own throats; or, they just disappear. A lot of us who don’t think Rockford and his new government are the answer have begun to suffer with bandit raids, home invasions, and all the above.
“Rockford claims it’s gangs of minority riff-raff from the cities, and the homeless have-nothings looking for somebody else’s something who’re causing the trouble. He claims they’ve joined together in some sort of bandit army that raids the surviving well-to-do areas of the state. He’s made a lot of noise about his militia crushing these bandits once and for all, but as of yet, it hasn’t happened.
“My guess is that Rockford himself is behind the attacks, but many of the people here are frightened enough to settle for anyone who can stop the raiding and the killing. If Rockford can pull that off, it won’t hurt his credibility. He knows he’ll never be ‘elected’ into power. If he has to wrest control away from someone, he will; but even a bullheaded egomaniac like our Colonel knows he’d be better off with some type of a general mandate from the people. It would buy him time to consolidate control over everyone before they realize what they’ve bought with their consent. It also affords him the perfect opportunity to kill off a lot of the dissention before coming to the rescue.”
“Wonderful,” Travis said sarcastically. “We’ve battled bad weather, bad guys, and bad luck for fifteen hundred miles, thinking we’d be safe and secure here, and now you tell us we’ve got to deal with the man who would be king, huh?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Harcourt agreed.
Travis paused for a moment. “Is anyone making an effort to stop him?”
“He has only one serious rival; a congressman named Turner who’s doing his best to form a democratic caucus. Turner’s a smart cookie, and so far, he’s managed to stay alive—which is more than can be said for most of the competition. He has the support of the majority of the legitimate government—the ones the colonel hasn’t paid off—but like I said, most of those people are running scared because of Rockford’s methods of reducing political dissent. There’re a handful of us who refuse to be intimidated, and have openly supported Turner. I truly believe most of the populace is on our side, but you got a taste today of what we’ve been dealing with. Like it or not, this is a political fight to the death. It’s a battle for democracy in America. What happens here could very well decide the political direction and the governmental policy of this country for the next few hundred years.
“Travis, I know you’ve been through a lot already,” Harcourt continued, “ and I’m not asking you to make any decisions right away, but we need men like you. Arkansas needs men and women like you folks now, more than ever. We are going to have to fight fire with fire, and from what I saw today, you’re pretty good at that. None of this will go away; if we don’t do something, it’ll just get worse.
“If you can live with a government that can take anything from anybody at any time with complete impunity—fine. If you can accept a governing body that controls through fear rather than democratic process, then again, you’ll do just fine, and you don’t need me. But I’ll bet last year’s salary that none of what’s going on now will set well with you. Find your home, and get settled. You know where to find me. I have a feeling our paths will cross again.”
Travis took a slow, thoughtful sip of his drink. “Well, Judge, first off, I’ve got to get to our little neck of the woods, make sure the quakes didn’t get it, and that it’s not owned by some new government. Providing none of the above is the case, we need time to settle in
and get ourselves organized. I can’t promise you anything at this point. I need to see the picture for myself, and it’s not my decision alone to make. We’re a team, a family, and we decide together.”
It was the first time Travis had used the term “family.” He suddenly realized how appropriate it sounded.
The cook announced supper, and they gathered around a large table in the dining room. The preacher said grace, and they sat down to their first home-cooked meal in almost two months. After dinner, there were more drinks and conversation until finally, the guests were shown to their sleeping quarters and the luxury of large mattresses, goose down pillows, and rooms that didn’t sway to the rhythm of the sea.
The following morning, the travelers said their farewells to the judge and his family, Travis promising to call on Harcourt in a couple of weeks. Then they headed for Polk County, and home.
They drove for three hours, the detours from damage becoming fewer as they reached the insulation of the mountains. At last, Travis took a deep breath, exhaled, and pointed at a narrow dirt road. “There’s our turnoff. The house is about a quarter-mile down that road.” The gravel path was still as bumpy as ever, but in a sense, that continuity pleased Travis, instilling confidence that the old place might also be the same. They rounded the final bend, and there before them stood the farmhouse, the guest house, and the barn—still in place, everything intact.
Travis breathed a sigh of relief. He had been terrified that he might have taken his friends all that way, through so much hardship, only to find their final sanctuary destroyed or usurped.
With his fears assuaged and his prayers answered, Travis smiled and turned to the others, his arm extended toward the property. “Gentlemen and lady, we’re home!”
The New Madrid Run Page 21
