“Do you think he’s under that hat, or that branch in the river?” one of the last men to get to the riverbank asked.
“They’re too small,” Lon answered. “His head would have shown.”
“Well he ain’t around here, that’s fer sure,” another said. “We’ve searched under and around every tree and bush for fifty yards in every direction. He ain’t here.”
“Look,” cried Bennie. He pointed to the other side, several hundred yards downriver. They all looked in that direction and saw West leading his Palomino out of the river onto a low bank. He mounted and rode up the low hill.
The four men brought their weapons to their shoulders and took hasty shots at him, but he was too far away and soon out of sight.
“Man, Bennie, you shoulda known he’d be hiding behind that horse,” accused Lon.
“I didn’t even know horses could swim,” Bennie replied. “Besides, you was so dang sure he was in those reeds, you didn’t even pay no attention.”
“You shoulda plugged the nag.”
“I ain’t gonna shoot no horse. Not unless we need food, I ain’t.”
“Well, because of you, we came up empty,” complained Lon.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Bennie replied smugly. “Look at this.”
He showed the others the printed sheet. He kept it in the hand he used to hold the rifle when he shot at West and it was a little wrinkled, but still perfectly readable. The men whistled as they read.
“Looks like maybe someone’s trying ta bump our guv outta office,” Lon said.
“Ain’t maybe; it’s fer sure,” Bennie corrected.
“Do you suppose the guys in Tracy know about it?”
“Look what it says at the bottom,” Bennie replied. “It says, ‘Please do not tell anyone about the election except for trusted friends who will vote. Burn this paper after you read it!’ Naw, Silva don’t know. We’d better call Mal and tell him what’s going on.”
“We can’t call Mal,” Lon said. “You know what his orders are. We don’t call him, he calls us – which is more often than I like, by the way.”
“That’s for normal stuff. This ain’t normal.”
“It’s an order, and it’s for all calls. Silva and that slick attorney of his don’t know we’re collecting people and putting them in BOC.”
“What could one little call hurt?” Bennie argued feebly.
“If Silva or Venable hear something and get suspicious, it could hurt a lot. I mean, really hurt. Think about it. You know what Mal is like. He likes to make people suffer, and now that he’s got a taste for killing, he’ll do both.”
“Yeah, he was bad enough just busting heads and breaking legs. Now, I’d sure hate to get him mad and go through a slow death in his hands.”
“So,” asked Lon, “ya still anxious to call him?”
“It can wait.”
* * * * *
What Warren heard perplexed him. “So,” he asked aloud as if thinking, “if it isn’t Lockman, who is it?”
“We can’t rule him out yet,” Zach replied. “We know he has strong feelings in opposition to what we’re doing, so he could still be involved. If so, he had an accomplice in the meeting.”
“Sophie?”
“At the moment she’s as good a suspect as any. If he’s using a radio in their house, it probably is her because he wouldn’t send off messages with her around if she wasn’t working with him.”
“That’s right,” Warren said. “He has to have a radio to get messages to Silva.”
“He or someone else. We can’t rule out anyone at this point. It would help if we could check out his house to see if he has a radio.”
“I know which house he and Sophie are using. Everything on the island is unlocked, so we could get in.”
“We need to pick a time when they’re not around and search it,” Zach decided.
“How about now?”
“What if they’re there?”
“When I’m not watching him, someone else is,” Warren said. “The first boat Captain Kotchel sent with the goods they found in those trucks on the mainland arrived a little while ago. “Phil got word to me just before we got together that Lockman and Sophie are helping unload them. They do most of the cooking, so they will be taking what they need to the kitchen at the hotel. That should give us at least an hour.”
“Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Zach and Warren went through everything in the house. The newcomers didn’t have many personal belongings, but most of what the previous inhabitants owned was still there, making the search tedious.
They went through every drawer and cabinet and looked under clothes and behind shampoo bottles. They looked under beds and behind and under sofas. There was no garage but there was a porch, so they looked under and behind rocking chairs and the table between them. They inspected every inch behind packages in the food pantry and in every wastebasket and clothes hamper. They turned pockets inside out and put them back in order.
When they didn’t find a radio the first time, they searched again. They found nothing the second time, either.
They met in the back porch at the end of the second search.
“Do you think we should search again?” Warren asked.
“No point,” Zach answered. “There’s clearly no radio here.”
“I still don’t trust him,” Warren said.
“It’s easy man to have a poor opinion of him,” Zach agreed. “I still can’t rule him out completely but if he’s sending messages, it’s not from here. We’ve been at this for over an hour, so we had better get out of here. Is everything back in place?”
“All except a satchel in the living room,” Warren reported. “I put it on the sofa, but it just occurred to me it was on the easy chair when we came in, I’ll put it back as we pass through.”
Zach opened the door to the kitchen, which led to the living room. At that moment, the front door opened, and they heard footsteps and voices.
Marcus, the leader of the Simi Valley contingent, was finishing a sentence regarding the plans for dinner that evening as they entered. Barry Lockman responded, telling the others what he and Sophie had in mind for the menu. He stopped in mid-sentence.
“What?” Zach and Warren heard Sophie say when Lockman ceased talking.
“Did you take anything out of my satchel before we left?” Lockman asked.
“No,” Sophie replied, “Why?”
“I took my camera out and put the satchel on the easy chair. Now it’s on the sofa.”
“Are you sure that’s where you left it?” Marcus asked.
“Absolutely,” Lockman replied. “Getting the camera was the last thing I did as I walked out. The easy chair is right here by the front door.”
“What does that mean?” Sophie wanted to know.
“Sophie, wait right here and stay alert,” they heard Lockman warn. “Marcus, we’ve got to search the house.”
“Barry, you’re not armed,” Sophie cried out in alarm.
“We’ll get knives from the kitchen.”
Chapter 28
WEST stopped as soon as he was behind the riverbank on the opposite side of the river. He dismounted and crawled back to the top of the bank to see what the four men were doing. They huddled, looking at something one of them had in his hands.
He was too far away to make out exactly what they were looking at but he already knew. They found the “newspaper.” If they were Silva’s men, and that was very likely the case, the would-be governor would soon know that he had opposition.
He slid down the bank and walked over to his Palomino. The horse was breathing hard. He was a hard swimmer, which is how Stroker got to be his name, but making it across a wide river in a strong current had tested his endurance. “Okay, boy, we’ll take it easy for a while,” West told the horse.
A cursory check of the saddlebags told West the newspapers were all too soggy to be of any use, and the food was in the same condition. He
would have to head home to dispose of it all. He would not dump trash in a field even in this situation.
He took his rifle out and dried it as best he could with leaves and some of the dry alfalfa in the field. It was the end of the season, and no one had irrigated the field in a long time.
“We’ll walk to the bridge and cross over there,” he said to Stroker. His sons took over most of the ranch management activities in recent years, so West spent a lot of time with his Palomino. He talked to the horse as if he understood. It often appeared that he did.
“We’ll have to get new supplies,” West added, slipping the rifle back into its scabbard. “And I have to let Larry and Manuel know about those guys getting a copy of the newspaper. If Silva finds out about the election too soon, it’s going to make it tough on us.”
He walked slowly so the horse could get his second wind. Stroker seemed to appreciate the break.
“We lost a day,” West continued, “and I’ll probably lose a little more time by rearranging my routes to avoid those goons. But we should get to everyone in plenty of time for them to get to the polls.”
They walked for another fifteen minutes. West stopped, and the horse looked patiently at him.
“It’ll be well after dark when we get home, but at least there’s one thing that is positive.” He spoke with enthusiasm in his voice and patted the horse, saying, “The bridge is still there, so we won’t have to swim back across the river.”
Stroker whinnied.
* * * * *
Lockman and Marcus grabbed butcher knives from a kitchen drawer. They went to the back door and Lockman threw it open. Both men rushed onto the porch with knives raised in a strike position but there was no one there.
Marcus noticed that the screen door leading outside was slightly ajar. “Was it that way before?” he asked, pointing at the door.
“I can’t be sure,” Lockman said, “but I doubt it. “I don’t remember who used it last, but either of us would have closed it.”
They continued looking outside. One went to one side of the house and the other went to the other side. Neither saw anyone.
They returned to the house and went through every room. They found no one. They returned to the living room. Sophie was sitting on the sofa. Lockman joined her, and Marcus sat in the easy chair.
“Did you find anything?” Sophie asked.
“Yes, and no,” Lockman said.
“What does that mean?”
“There wasn’t anyone, but I know the satchel was in a different place, the porch door wasn’t closed, and I got a distinct feeling that some things were not quite like they were before. They have been moved around.”
“Barry, are you sure you aren’t imagining things?” Sophie thought she heard running footsteps at the side of the house but didn’t mention it. Why add more anxiety to what seemed to be a growing paranoia. Besides, the sounds were faint and she, too, might have imagined them.
“No I’m not,” Lockman insisted. “Somebody was here.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were looking for something.”
Sophie considered that a strange notion. “What could they possibly be looking for here? We barely have the clothes on our back.”
“The way Barry spouted off today could have made them suspect he is in cahoots with Silva,” Marcus suggested.
“Why would you think that?”
“I didn’t say I thought that; it’s just that Barry was outspoken, and some people seemed to take umbrage.”
“Even so,” Sophie objected, “I can’t imagine what they would hope to find here.”
“Who knows?” said Marcus. “Maybe a radio.”
“A radio?” cried Sophie. “What would we do with a radio? There are no stations. No music, no talk shows, nothing.”
“Not that kind of radio,” Marcus said with a chuckle. “I meant the kind people use to talk to one another.” He looked at Lockman.
Lockman mulled that over. “That can’t be it,” he concluded with finality in his voice. “No, it wasn’t the Americans. It was that Chinese captain. He’s been sniffing around Sophie, so maybe he thought he could find something here that could help him get close to her.”
“Barry, he’s not sniffing around me,” Sophie argued in an exasperated tone. “He’s just being nice because he knows I lost my family.”
“You have me,” he said indignantly.
“Yes,” she acknowledged. It was a statement of fact. . . no more, no less.
She continued. “Besides, what could he possibly hope to find here?”
“Someone with a devious mind like his could be looking for anything,” Lockman huffed.
“How can you call someone you just met devious?”
“You heard him. Here’s a guy who was lucky enough to become the captain of a communist submarine, yet he stuck up for capitalism. Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s looking for something he can use for ulterior purposes. Well, you can be sure he’s not going to get it here.”
* * * * *
Zach had just closed the door to the kitchen when he heard the three from Simi Valley enter the house. The door didn’t make a sound, and he silently thanked the previous owners for conscientiously oiling the hinges.
He and Warren hurried out the back door as soon as they heard Marcus and Lockman head for the kitchen to get knives. Both searchers had been on boats and were wearing soft-soled deck shoes, so their footsteps on the tile floor did not make a sound. Zach couldn’t risk allowing the back door to slam, so he stopped it a few inches before it hit the frame. It made no sound.
Once around the corner of the house, they ran to the house next door. They slowed to a fast walk when they got out of sight of Lockman and Sophie’s house. It was a fifteen-minute walk, so they had time to discuss their options.
As soon as they were on Warren’s boat, they called Two Harbors to report what they had – or more accurately, what they hadn’t – found at the house.
Captain Kotchel was waiting for their call. “If you can’t narrow it down to Lockman, it seems to me you need to consider everyone from Simi Valley a suspect.”
“We’re in agreement,” Zach responded. “We’re going to watch everyone until we catch the culprit. In addition, we will continue with the fast-paced training regimen we discussed at the meeting.”
“What would that accomplish? It’s always good to have people at a state of readiness, but we know Avalon is not going to be attacked right away, so why rush it?”
“Two reasons,” Zach replied. “First, if we continue training people, it will hide the fact that we know they’re not planning to attack Avalon right away. The spy here, and therefore the people in Tracy, will not know there’s someone watching Silva and his men.”
“That’s a good idea, but you’ll be getting people all excited about a fight that’s not going to happen.”
“Oh, it’s going to happen, all right,” Zach responded. “That’s the second reason for the training. We have a few things in mind. We plan on. . . ”
“Just a minute,” Kotchel cut in abruptly, “I have a Mayday from the second boat bringing supplies over for you.”
He went off the air.
Zach drummed his fingers, waiting. It seemed like an hour, but it was less than two minutes later when Kotchel came back on air. He was obviously shaken.
“The boat was attacked. Heavily armed hijackers on three boats hit them.”
“It’s a fighting ship, isn’t it?” Zach said. “They can hold them off, right?”
“We have no fighting ships,” Kotchel answered sadly. “There were three men on a supply boat. There’s no way they could fight off three boats filled with armed hijackers.”
“Were?”
“Last I heard was close-up automatic gunfire.
The hijackers boarded the boat, and the radio went silent.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean. . . ” Zach’s voice trailed off.
“Ther
e’s no use kidding ourselves,” Kotchel said quietly. “The food, the boat, and my men are gone.”
“What’s the status of the third boat with food for the island?” Zach asked.
“It’s still in Port Hueneme,” Kotchel said. I’m going to call them and tell them to wait until I can get there to escort them out to Catalina.”
“Aren’t you scheduled to make a trip north with food for people up there?”
“Yes, and I need to see what’s happening up and down the coast. Plus, there are some heavy weapons up there for us but that will have to wait.”
“Captain, we’ll need those weapons when Silva’s men attack.”
“Right now,” Kotchel responded, “those kids you took responsibility for need food.”
“Hold for just a second please.” Zach turned to Warren. “Do you have enough fuel to get us to Port Hueneme and back?”
“I have plenty.”
“Are you up for a trip, knowing it’s almost certain we’ll be attacked by a bunch of cutthroats?”
Warren swallowed. “Not the kind of boating I’m most keen on, but I don’t see that we have a choice.”
“Good,” said Zach. He went back to the radio. “Captain Kotchel, we’re heading to Port Hueneme. We should be there about an hour after you get there. We’ll bring the food back ourselves, and you can head north as planned.”
“Zach,” Kotchel argued, “there are three of them.”
“The way I see it,” Zach responded evenly, “by tomorrow morning, there will be three less.”
* * * * *
Chapter 29
WARREN’S boat arrived in Port Hueneme a little after one in the morning. It was almost four a.m. when they completed the transfer of canned food to his cabin cruiser. They loaded the rest of the canned goods onto the coast guard cutter for the towns in the north.
Captain Kotchel stood on the pier next to Zach and Warren and watched as men placed canvass over the goods stored on the bow deck. They tied the cover down with strong lines to secure the food.
“We got so engrossed in defense measures, I didn’t have a chance to ask Harry Peckham about anything else,” the captain said when the canvass was secured. “How are things coming with that charter, or by-laws, or whatever it is you people are going to call the document you’re working on to govern the island?”
Seeking a Sane Society: Nothing is the Same (The Seeking Series Book 2) Page 12
