Bill remembered a single safety pin, in the waistband of his jeans. At the time he’d thought of it last, he had deemed it inaccessible, because it was at the small of his back while his hands were cuffed in front of him, around a solid metal pipe. But he’d taken his pants off when he had started spewing from both ends.
His ill treatment and the constant rushing noise in the dam’s turbine room had blown the safety pin – now easily accessible – right out of his conscious awareness. Once it came back, though, Bill knew immediately what he had to do. He felt his way in the darkness to his pants and grabbed them, running his hand along the waistband.
Only to discover that Major Benton was too careful to let something like that slip. Bill checked the waistband a dozen more times, just to be sure, but the pin was gone. He slumped down to the cold, damp concrete floor, and felt the weight of defeat start to settle over him.
He thought of Sally, Cole, and Jenny, the family he had outside of the deafening turbine room. So far, he’d managed to not give away the location of his cabin, or even whether or not the kids were up with him and Sally. He had not yet betrayed them to the sadistic Benton. That was the reason for the false execution. Benton was still trying to break Bill, still trying to get information from him.
Thinking about his family, Bill remembered something else. A single word that they would often say when confronted with unexpected circumstances, or a problem that initially seemed insurmountable.
“Situation.”
Chapter 23
By the light of a couple small candles and using some boxes, Danny Wilkerson laid out his best recollection of the Libby Dam complex on the kitchen table of the Chandler cabin. His father, Steve, looked over his shoulder, while Sally, Cole, and Jenny Chandler huddled around him.
“We were first taken past the visitors’ center, to this building down here by the water, probably where the engineers did their work,” Danny said, touching a pasta box. “This is where the holding cell was where I saw Bill. After they cleared me out of there, they put me into a tent city over here with the rest of the folks they all swept up.”
“You didn’t see Bill down there, though?” Sally asked.
“Nope. Never did down in the tent city. But I saw that Army dude I told you about, the guy that seems to be in charge. He’d come in and out of the power house of the dam itself. Remember that’s what this part here is from taking the tour a couple times. Sometimes he’d be going in and out with workmen, other times alone.”
“Tell me about the Army dude,” Sally said.
“I really wish I knew more about all the stuff on him. Special Forces. I know that, because he’d wear the green beret and had that over the patch on his shoulder. Pin that looked like a gold splat on the beret, whatever that means, a bunch more on his chest.
“Major,” Cole said.
“Sure,” Danny said. “But like I told you, he knew Bill, and I didn’t like the look on his face when he recognized him. Made me want to get real invisible.”
Sally looked at her children, wondering how much of her speculation to share with them. The rank was right for what she considered a worst-case scenario. She didn’t want to worry them needlessly, but also didn’t want to lie to them or fill them up with false hope. Danny’s words had sunk in with Cole and Jenny, though, and she could see a lot of worry on their faces.
“Dad in some kind of trouble?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t know,” Sally said.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more for you,” Danny told the Chandlers. “I only saw Bill for those couple hours, never saw where they took him to.”
“You’ve given us a lot,” Cole said. “Thank you.”
“If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to let you know,” Danny said, getting up from the table.
After the Wilkersons left, Sally brought the kids back into the kitchen. Quietly, because they still wanted to keep their ears open for any unusual sounds around the cabin, she let them in Bill’s last couple years in the Corps, taking care of the troops that had deployed with him, and the stress of testifying in an investigation of somebody who had some very high-ranking friends looking out for him.
“You don’t really think this is the same guy, do you?” Jenny asked.
“Your dad would look him up every so often, see where he was and what he was doing. So this mystery officer is the right rank to be Benton, and I can’t think of anybody else in the Army that would have an old axe to grind with him.”
“And you say dad caught him torturing people to death?”
“Yeah,” Sally said.
“We need to find a way to get him out of there, then!” Cole said. “There’s got to be someone higher rank that we can go to, let them know, right?”
Sally leaned back in her chair and tried to think. She had picked up a good deal of information about military structures and what ranks might be responsible for what from living with Bill. But she couldn’t confidently apply any of that knowledge to a military takeover of the civilian government in the US in the case of an extreme national emergency. Would a Major be the highest ranking official in the immediate area, or would there be someone over him? If so, where would those headquarters be? Eureka, or somewhere else?
“Mom.”
“Yeah, Cole,” Sally said, shaken out of her thoughts.
“What are we going to do to help dad?”
Sally sighed. “Well, let’s look at our situation. What do we know for sure?”
“Some sicko has him,” Cole said.
“Where?”
“Power house of the dam, maybe?” Jenny offered.
“Maybe,” Sally said. “How many soldiers are between us and him?”
“We don’t know,” Cole said.
“OK. How many of us are there to go against an unknown number of soldiers.”
Cole frowned at his mother. “Are you trying to talk us out of doing something?” he asked.
“I’m trying to talk us into being smart about this.”
“Yeah, Cole,” Jenny said, leaning back and pulling up the hem of her shirt, to show the bandaged wound from their run-in with the mountain lion just a few nights back. “Let’s be smarter than the last time.”
“We had no way of knowing that would happen.” Cole said.
“And we have no way of knowing what we’re up against at the moment. So we need to get information.”
“You mean sit around yapping while dad’s getting tortured?”
“You remember your wilderness survival course, don’t you, Cole?” Jenny asked. “Almost no situation is made worse by looking at it for a few seconds and making a plan for how to tackle it.”
“Well, it’s been a few seconds.”
“So, what’s your plan, then, Cole?” Jenny asked. “Please, let us know.”
“Stop, you two!” Sally said. “Just stop.”
Cole and Jenny both looked at her, Cole with a smoldering scowl on his face.
“Let’s get back on track,” Sally said. “Appeal up the chain of command, or see about getting him out?”
“Who’s the higher command?” Jenny asked.
“Unknown,” Sally said.
Cole got up from the table and went to the window. “So we’re back to dealing with an unknown number of soldiers between us and dad,” he said, but with a calmer voice.
“Soldiers, law enforcement, and deputized civilians, yes,” Sally said.
“Plus movement restrictions. Sounds like anybody caught on the roads is going to get swept up and put into a camp?” Cole asked.
“As far as I can tell,” Sally said. I don’t know if families like ours that are equipped to ride it out in place would be swept or left alone. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Dad is today’s problem.”
Jenny got up and went to the kitchen to put some hot water on for coffee. She was relieved to see her brother and mother starting to move towards each other and start to find some common ground on what to do next. Cole was by far the most hot-h
eaded and impulsive one in the family, their mother the most careful and methodical.
“I wish Danny Wilkerson were still here,” Jenny said. “Now that you two are talking, I’m realizing we’ve got a lot of questions we should have asked him. Like how many soldiers are at the dam.”
“Well, let’s list out all of the unknowns we have, and see if we can run down tomorrow and get Danny to answer them,” Cole said.
“In the meantime,” Sally said to Jenny. “In our bedroom, on the bookshelf by the closet, there are some of your dad’s old manuals. See what you can find about improvised weapons, infiltration tactics, intelligence gathering… Anything that will help us figure out what we can and can’t do with the three of us.”
“On it,” Jenny said, making a quick check of the water on the burner before going to grab a handful of books.
Chapter 24
“Situation,” Bill said, setting his jeans down beside him.
As quickly as his hopes had leapt up when he remembered the safety pin, they’d been dashed when he discovered he no longer had it. No pin, they’d taken his belt, his boots, his watch, even his wedding ring when they’d dragged him, unconscious, into the heart of the dam. He had nothing but a few coffee, creamer, and sugar packets and a book of matches purloined from the MREs they’d been giving him. He wondered if he’d be able to fashion a pick out of the foil packets by rolling them up tight enough, but no matter how many times he turned it over in his head, he couldn’t figure out a way to get something narrow and stiff enough to do the trick.
He picked up his jeans again, running his fingers along the waistband to see if somehow he’d missed the pin the first several times he’d looked for it, when he came across one of the rivets at the edge of a pocket. Copper and round, so not something he’d be able to use to get into a lock. Same for the metal button at the top of the fly.
Then he touched the zipper. Since he preferred hard-wearing work pants, the zipper was a heavy-duty one, with a good, stout pull. The cut out where it was attached to the tab was deep… It took a good half hour of concerted effort, but Bill finally managed to twist and torque enough to finally break the zipper pull free. His hands were cramped up from bunching the fabric around the zipper up and holding it tight while working at the pull. His fingertips were worn raw from the effort, blistered, and one of them was bleeding. But the pain and effort had paid off. He had a three-quarter inch piece of brass, one part broad, the other narrow.
With some work, very carefully so as not to snap the pull in the middle, Bill used the gap in the zipper tab to straighten out the narrow leg of the pull. He also had a concrete floor below him, with an expansion gap in it. That gave him somewhere to grind away at the narrow part of the pull, to shape it a little bit more.
For the only time since he’d been brought down to the turbine room, Bill was thankful for the immense amount of noise around him. He could just imagine how hard it would be to quietly shape metal by scraping it on the floor otherwise.
Still, he knew he had to remain vigilant. He’d made an opportunity for himself, and if he got caught at his work, he’d lose it just as quickly. So he worked as much as he could by touch, and kept his eyes moving constantly for any sign that someone was approaching.
As he was getting close to satisfied with his work, he saw a tiny bit of light in the darkness, a long distance away. It was more of a diffuse glow than a point, maybe as if a doorway that he did not have a direct line of sight on had been opened, and he was catching some of the spill into the room. Bill opened his mouth, and quickly tucked the zipper pull down between his cheek and gum.
He never heard Benton’s approach, but he still felt the presence of the man coming closer. Bill braced himself, waiting, he presumed, for the lighting of the little tea light that Benton used for their sessions. He kept his eyes to the floor, so the flare of the lighter or match wouldn’t throw his night vision, but was instead blinded by the beam of a high intensity flashlight. It wasn’t initially aimed at his face, but it didn’t take long for the light to find Bill and fix on him.
Bill was tempted to start in one the name, rank, service number, date of birth, but also didn’t know if the piece of metal in his mouth would make him sound different, so he opted for silence.
“We’ve got to move you, Billy Boy,” Benton shouted. “I’ve got some workmen that need to get access to this part of the room.”
Bill opened his eyes a bit when he felt the glare of the flashlight leave his face. The light was tracing over the floor around him.
“After we get him relocated, come back here and clean this shit up.”
“Yes, sir,” somebody said. It was the first time Bill had heard a voice other than Benton’s in all the time he’d been down there.
“It’ll be a lot easier to have you walk with my associates here than to make them carry you. So don’t put up a big fuss and make them bust your head, alright?” Benton asked. “Go ahead,” he said next.
Bill felt two pairs of strong hands grab his arms. He put enough resistance in to let them know he hadn’t given up yet, but not enough to make it seem like he was going for an escape. He know from his past training that transitional spaces were the best opportunities to make a break, but in pitch darkness, no light of his own, no weapon, no idea of the layout of the room, or anything else to work with, Bill knew that he simply didn’t have enough information to get away with making a run for it.
Better to use the opportunity to get himself more information.
One of the two men flanking him uncuffed his right wrist, and with his partner, quickly brought Bill’s arms behind his back, and re-cuffed him. Benton turned the beam of the flashlight away from him, and started to walk. As his escort followed, Bill understood exactly what Benton was up to. By not leaving either of the other two men with a light, nothing immediately around Bill was illuminated. There was just a glow on the floor ahead of Benton for the rest to follow, which gave them no detail about what they were passing. Bill at least counted the steps they were taking and committed the turns to memory.
They finally got to a place where Benton stopped. He shone the flashlight onto another pipe, which let Bill see that he was being shackled up in another place not unlike the last one he’d been in. He did his best to take in as many details as he could, and compare them where he’d been before. Same pipe with a bend up near the top, same cold, damp concrete floor with an expansion gap. At the edges of the light, he could see the body of one of the turbines.
Taking a quick look at his escort, he saw Army uniforms, MP brassards, sidearms, lights, batons. Trying to scrap it up while they uncuffed him to shackle him back to the pipe wouldn’t go in his favor all.
“By the way, I think I’ve been too generous up to now with you, Wild Bill,” Benton said. “Life was a bit too easy at the other place.”
The two MPs pressed down hard on Bill’s shoulders, and one kneed the back of his thigh, dropping him down to a kneeling position. They backed him up to the pipe and instead of uncuffing his wrists, one of the MPs pulled out another pair of handcuffs, and they cuffed his ankles together around the pipe. Then the other gave him a little shove to the back of his shoulder that dropped Bill right onto his face.
“I’ve got to get the workmen set up, so we don’t have much time to play today,” Benton said.
Bill turned his face to the side in time to see Benton dismiss the two MPs. The saluted smartly, did a sharp about-face, and turned on their own flashlights to guide themselves out.
As their light faded into the distance, Benton unleashed a good dozen vicious kicks to Bill’s thighs. Then he took a couple steps closer, and a moment later, Bill felt something warm splashing on his shoulders and head, and smelled urine. He struggled as much as he could to get out of the stream, but Benton managed to follow him. The last thing the Major did before picking up his flashlight and walking away was to reach into a cargo pocket, and drop an MRE.
Chapter 25
By ten o’clock the fo
llowing morning, Steve and Danny Wilkerson, as well as Mark, Bonnie, and Ed Meier had converged on the Chandler cabin. Danny was upset enough at having been hauled in just for being on the road to get home that his help for trying to figure out a rescue was almost a given. Steve had always had a chip on his shoulder about federal overreach himself, and had always thought of the Chandlers as good neighbors, so he was onboard as well.
The Meiers were an unexpected surprise when they carefully announced their arrival to the Chandler property. They’d heard the gunshots on the property the night Sally had gotten home, and had seen her and the kids ditching the invaders’ truck in the lake. They’d been keeping an eye on the property from a distance, and had noticed that Cole and Jenny had been on their own for the first few days after the event. That bought the kids specifically, but also the whole family, a lot of respect from them. They said that Cole and Jenny not going into a panic, but instead setting up to defend the homestead and prepare for the long haul showed they were smart kids raised well.
“The kind we’re going to need to put this all back together again,” Mark Meier said. “So let’s go get Bill and get you all back together.”
Mark had never served in the military, being nearly blind in one eye, but his wife had done ten years in the Corps at about the same time Bill had been in. Their son was active in scouting and as much a hunter as the Chandler kids were.
“I wish I could say Marines had a school solution for how to escape imprisonment, but there isn’t one. At best, I can maybe guess how Bill would approach something if I see it,” Bonnie said, looking over the impromptu model of the Libby Dam and its environs.
“It’s something,” Sally said. “And we need anything we can get if we’re going to pull this off.”
There was one thing on the table that everybody gathered around could see, but nobody wanted to acknowledge. Danny’s best guess as to how many people were at the dam:
6 MPs
8 Other Soldiers
5 Civilian Guards
6 Dam Employees
Dawn of Destruction Page 54
