The back side of the building was L-shaped, with the restaurant forming the short leg of the L away from the road. Three vehicles were parked inside of the corner against the back of the dance hall. They were completely invisible from the road, and could only be seen if someone took the time to drive all the way around to the back. A wall of dripping pine trees crowded close to the back of the restaurant. A helicopter might spot the unusual gathering of vehicles, but no helicopter was likely to be flying on this rainy night with the clouds pressing close to the ground.
She pulled into the space between a white SUV and a dark pickup truck on a strip of hard black asphalt, and killed her engine and her light. A male voice off to her left side said, “Over here.” She removed her helmet and walked toward where she had heard the voice, quite night blind in the sudden absence of her headlight. Someone shined a flashlight down the trash and bottle strewn path along the back of the building.
“It’s me,” she heard Phil Carson say. “Everything is ready.”
She went to him, the light flicked off, and they embraced.
Ranya said, “Thanks for coming. I really didn’t want to do this alone.”
“You’re not alone darlin’, you’re not alone. Listen: just go with me on this, but tonight your name’s Robin, okay?”
“Robin?”
“Everybody has a new name for tonight. Except me, ‘cause every body here already knows who I am. It’s just a precaution, in case things go wrong later.”
“Okay, I’m Robin. That’s fine.”
“And if you recognize anybody, don’t let on, and don’t use their real names.”
“All right.”
“Well then, come on in and meet the posse.” Carson pulled open a door and they went inside.
A hissing Coleman lantern provided light in what had been a small windowless manager’s office or employee work area. It sat in the middle of a round table in the center of the room; the table was covered with maps and black and white aerial photographs. Around the table stood seven people of widely varying heights, including Phil Carson. Two portly bearded men wore jungle boonie hats, and matching camouflage rain jackets. An older couple wore blue raincoats with the hoods pushed back onto their shoulders. Two other men wore ball caps pulled low over their faces.
The lantern had a round metal shade on its top, which cast a harsh yellow light down on the table, but left the people obscured in shadow from the waist up. Even so, Ranya recognized one of the men wearing the ball caps: Jasper Mosby of the Suffolk police! But as she had been instructed, she made no outward sign of greeting him, and neither did he acknowledge her with more than a subtle nod of his head.
“It’s really nice to see you folks, it’s just…kind of hard to believe…I never thought…” She crossed her arms tightly and began to visibly shiver. “I’m sorry, but I’m freezing to death; I got drenched again riding up here.”
The grandmotherly woman said, “We’ve been waiting for you honey. I’ve got a thermos of coffee, and a thermos of soup.”
“Oh thank you!”
Phil Carson said, “I picked up a sweater and a raincoat for you,” and handed her a white plastic shopping bag.
Ranya swung off her black daypack and unclipped her fanny pack and dropped them to the floor, then stepped into an adjoining storage room. The reflected light from the lantern through the half open door was enough for her to see by as she unzipped her denim riding jacket, which was soaked through again. She felt her black t-shirt; it was also wet so she stripped it off. She was already braless from before. She quickly shook out and pulled on the new gray sweatshirt. Carson was looking out for her; she hadn’t even asked him for the dry clothes. For the first time in many hours she was dry from the skin out, at least from the waist up.
The equally new green rain slicker was a little too big, but it was fine after she folded the cuffs up once, and its hood had a drawstring to pull it close to her face. Once she put her ball cap on under the hood, she would even be able to keep the rain off of her face. She left the hood thrown back and returned to the meeting room with her wet denim jacket and t-shirt in the plastic bag. She knew that her loose hair must look like Medusa’s snakes after the abuse it had suffered today, but it was a minor annoyance, considering the seriousness of the night.
The woman returned from a side table and handed her a plastic traveling mug with a snapped-on lid.
“Here’s your coffee. Cream and sugar, all right honey?”
“That’s wonderful, thanks.” The warmth of the mug against her wind and rain-chilled fingers was as welcome to Ranya as the hot sweet liquid was to sip.
Phil Carson said, “Well everybody, this is my friend Robin, and like I told you, she’s most of the reason we’re all here tonight. Robin, this is the best team I could muster on short notice. They might not look like much, but they’ll do what they need to do, as long as they don’t have to march too far, or climb over anything higher than a curb.”
That comment brought a “damn right” and an “I heard that” from the two shorter bearded gentlemen, and chuckles from the rest.
“We’re lucky it’s raining; I think we’ll be able to drive right in. Were you able to draw any maps?” asked Carson.
She picked up her pack and set it on the edge of the table, and withdrew her folded calendar pages. “I didn’t have much of a choice of stationery; this is the best I could do.” The four grimy cheesecake calendar photos were laid sketch-side-up on top of the printed maps.
Carson continued with his ad hoc briefing. “Based on these aerial pictures and topo maps, and a quick scouting trip I made part way in, we came up with our own infiltration route. Robin said they’re not putting out any security, but it doesn’t make sense to go in through their own gate, not if we have a choice. It’s too risky. They might have cameras on it, or we might run right into them if they’re coming in or out.”
Their proposed infiltration and exfiltration routes were marked on the pictures and maps with a magic marker. Carson leaned over and examined Ranya’s sketch of the area around the hangars, then he turned it north upwards to match his own street and military topographic maps. “Okay Robin, you were there, now tell us where the prisoner is. Tell us what you saw.”
“I was over here.” She pointed on her own sketch to where she had marked the abandoned utility trailers across the tarmac. “I had a perfect view straight between the hangars and the buildings. I saw…the prisoner…being taken from this building to this one, and then back again. He’s still there, as far as I know. The house trailers are inside this hangar. They’re big, just like mobile homes. Their vehicles are inside this one, and this is the motor home with all the antennas on top.”
Carson said, “All right, we’ll call the first building on the east side B-1. That’s where we think the prisoner is. Next is B-2. Then H-1 is the hangar with the trailers, and finally H-2 is the vehicle hangar all the way on the west side.” He marked their names on Ranya’s map with a black marker. “We don’t know for sure if he’s in B-1 or B-2, so we’ll hit both of them at the same time. Jake and Fred here will take B-2, it’s closer to the hangars, and they’re more…experienced at this. Robin and I’ll take B-1. Tom and Harry are going to be here and here, behind the corners of B-2, to cover the front and back of the hangars from the side.
“Archie and Edith are going to be across the tarmac with their machine gun. If everything goes completely to hell, they’ll be able to lay down automatic fire on the hangars and keep the bad guys away from the buildings while we’re in there. Just don’t aim it past here,” Carson pointed to the space between building two and hangar one on Ranya’s sketch. “You’ll have friendlies in front of B-1 and B-2. But hopefully you won’t have to fire at all; you’ll just be over there as our observation post. Just tell us what’s going on, and give us a warning on the radio if anybody’s coming from the hangars.”
“You’ve got a machine gun?” Ranya asked the older couple.
Edith answered, “We s
ure do, sweetie; we’ve got an M-60. It’s mint.”
“That’s .308, right?”
“That’s right,” answered Archie. “Actually it’s 7.62 NATO, but .308’s close enough. We’ve got 500 rounds all linked up together, ready to go. Nice shiny South African surplus ammo in our own links, it works like a charm. We take our boat out on the ocean and test fire it every year or two.”
“That’s kind of a rare gun for a civilian, isn’t it? I mean, if they find 7.62 brass and links in a big pile all over the ground, they’re going to have a pretty short list of machine gun owners to check, aren’t they?”
Archie chuckled. “They would if it was ever registered. But it wasn’t.”
Ranya was curious about the origin of their machine gun, but she kept her questions to herself. She’d heard around Freedom Arms that military unit armorers sometimes wrote off weapons as worn out or broken, and then substituted or held back spare parts until they could assemble complete weapons, “off the books.” And with the Army and Marines changing from the old M-60s to more modern machine guns, she guessed that more than a few had been mislaid on the road to the furnace.
She asked them, “An M-60 and all that ammo’s pretty heavy. How are you going to get it in?” Even in the dim light above the lantern, Archie and Edith looked to be in their sixties at least. Archie was white haired; Edith’s hair appeared to be silvery blond.
Edith said, “Don’t worry, Robin, we’re not carrying it in, we’re driving it in. And we’re setting it up in our truck, so we’ll catch all the brass and the links. We just need to know if we can get a two-wheel drive pickup back around here where you were, without being seen from the hangars.” Edith traced a path around the tarmac and pointed to the flat bed utility trailers where Ranya had been concealed during her afternoon recon.
Ranya replied, “I’d say so. The old service road here is so overgrown, the bushes and trees will be scraping both sides at times. It’ll be a tight fit, but you can push through in your truck. But with your lights off, I think it’ll be too dark to find your way in.”
“We’ve got that covered,” said Carson. “We’ve got a little night scope for them.”
“It screws right onto a video camera too. Once we’re in position, we’re going to start making movies,” said Edith. She did most of their talking.
Ranya looked to each of them, “I’m just so grateful, to all of you. I never really expected to have any help tonight. Except for you.” She smiled warmly at Phil Carson.
Edith said, “Phil called this afternoon, and asked us what we were doing tonight, can you imagine? He explained the whole thing. Well you know, we thought something like this was going on, but we never dreamed they’d be right in our own backyard!
“Anyhow, Phil asked us to help him out tonight, and we’re thinking, what are we saving that damned machine gun for anyway? Phil’s one of the only people on earth who knows about our M-60. Archie’s been hiding it for years and years, and for what? If we’re not going to use it now, what’d we keep it for? Our kids are all gone, and even our grandkids are almost grown up. They’re so brainwashed now, they won’t even touch a .22. You’d think we were offering them heroin or something! Sad, isn’t it? So if we’re never going to use it, who will?”
Archie added, “I never expected to make it this far anyway, and I never was the nursing home type. So why sit around just watching all this crap on TV and getting an ulcer? All these years I’ve been keeping that M-60 ‘for a rainy day’, and finally, finally, it’s come. And it’s even raining! Tell me that wasn’t a sign from above.”
Carson told him, “Just don’t go trigger happy on us; your job’s to be our lookout and make movies. No shooting unless the bad guys are coming after us, so don’t even jack the bolt before that. We all need to keep our fingers off the triggers; one accidental discharge will ruin everything, everything.
“Any shooting we do tonight should only be inside B-1 and B-2, and only with the suppressed weapons. If we end up in a fire-fight outside with the bad guys, shooting unsuppressed weapons, we’re all in deep shit, got it? I’m already nervous about doing this with a pick-up team, but I guess you’re all just as nervous as I am for the same reason, so we’ll all just have to deal with it, okay?”
Everybody nodded or muttered their agreement. They all understood the stakes, and their own limitations.
“All right then, we don’t have much time, but let’s grab our weapons, check the gun lights, and practice our two-man entries a few times. Remember, light ’em up, and if they move, shoot ’em. I know we’ve already been over this, but we’re looking for a guy named Brad. He’s thirty, he’s got light brownish hair and blue eyes, and he’s probably wearing tan shorts and a blue polo shirt. We might find Burgess Edmonds in there too, he’s about our age. Anybody else is a bad guy, so if they cause any problems, don’t hesitate. Waste ’em. We already checked our radios; I’ll handle our radio, Robin, so you don’t have to worry about it. Okay, take five. Then grab your gear and come back in for a little practice, and then we’ll go.”
****
Jasper Mosby sat quietly in disbelief. He couldn’t get over the unbelievable situation he found himself in. Here he was, a career police officer, sharing a vehicle with armed criminals on their way to possibly kill federal agents.
The driver and the front seat passenger were the two gray-bearded and pony-tailed hillbilly types Carson had called Tom and Harry, but Mosby recognized them. They were actually the Bedford brothers, who owned a gigantic junk yard operation over in Isle of Wight County. Of course, Mosby didn’t let on in any way that he knew who they were; there was no reason to. Ranya was alone in the rear-facing back seat; the plan was that Brad would ride back there after the rescue, as well as Burgess Edmonds if they found him too.
Besides the five of them in the station wagon, Phil Carson was in his Chevy truck a hundred yards in front of them, as they drove the few remaining miles south on the rain-slick road toward the south end of the base. Archie and Edith were following behind them in their own blue Dodge truck with its matching blue camper shell.
Jesus! Just what had he volunteered for? And what was he going to do if they were pulled over by a Chesapeake cop?
Frank Santander—Fred tonight—tapped the front-seat passenger on the shoulder, and asked him, “Hey, uh, Harry, what year’s this thing? It’s a Buick, right? What kind of top speed can it get?” The black primer-painted station wagon’s engine made a low rumbling growl unlike any family car Santander had ever been in.
“It’s a ’71 Buick Estate Wagon. She’s got an original 455, and she’ll do 130 all night long.”
“No way. Really?”
“Really.”
“What’ll she do with all these people? On the way out we might have two more on board, and that’s a lot of weight. What’ll she do when we’re loaded down?”
Harry laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. She’ll do the one-thirty with a heavy load. Trust me.”
Mosby was glad that it was so dark inside the Estate Wagon. It was becoming obvious now that the bearded and pony-tailed Bedford brothers were, or had been, moonshine bootleggers at the very least. The monster-engined station wagons of the sixties and early seventies (from before the first oil crunch) were greatly prized by “transportation specialists.” With their back seats folded down to form a flat cargo deck, they carried over a hundred gallons of ‘shine in a single tightly packed layer, six one gallon jugs to a carton, all low to the ground for hauling ass across all kinds of roads. A hundred gallons or more of untaxed white lightning was indeed a heavy load…
And, add to that, the rumor that Phil Carson had been a pot smuggler in the early 1970’s, after he had come home from Nam. It had been whispered around Suffolk that Carson knew how to get a sailboat with a raised waterline from Jamaica or Colombia to the Chesapeake Bay. The word was that he’d been one of the rare smart ones who had cashed in and gotten out of the game before the trade had turned vicious with the coming of cocaine in th
e ’80s. Now, as far as he knew, Carson bought and sold properties for a living.
If the Bedford brothers had enjoyed a professional relationship with Phil Carson back in those days, then at some point they had switched from carrying bottles to bales, and so they had probably come by their junk yard money through the transportation of controlled substances. But that was all a long time ago…
And here he was, sitting behind them in a souped-up station wagon loaded with illegal weapons.
As the wagon rolled down South River Road through a dark tunnel of overhanging trees, the mist ahead lit by their low beams, Mosby imagined what the headlines would say if he was arrested with this bunch. He started counting the possible felony charges against him, but gave up after seven. He’d be finished. He’d die in jail, and Liddy would die in the poor house.
All of their submachine guns were covered by blankets and hidden beneath the seats, but he had no doubt that if they were pulled over by a Chesapeake cop, they’d never get away once he shined his flashlight inside this station wagon. They’d be “made” and the weapons would be found. Then what? He could never shoot a brother officer, at least not a uniformed local cop, but what about the others? It would be murder-one for everybody in the car, no matter who shot first.
And really, what was the difference between shooting a uniformed local cop, and what they were planning to do on the base?
Well, there was a big difference. Local police don’t burn people in their houses, or blow them up on the highways, or shoot them down with silent MP-5s. Joe Bardiwell’s daughter Ranya was sitting facing the other way right behind him, and that was enough to refocus Jasper Mosby on the operation ahead, and give him the motivation to do what he might have to do. That, and the fact that he had introduced Brad Fallon to her in the first place! Now, whatever happened, he was involved in it clear up to his eyeballs, whether he liked it or not. And all because of a dead Doberman, and a shovel…
Enemies Foreign And Domestic Page 57
