by Ellis, Tara
“Seems like a good plan,” Chloe said, impressed.
“To talk about it, you’d think it’s a marvelous idea,” Caleb agreed. “But when it comes down to the logistics of first building these repeaters, and then figuring out where and how to place them to make them work, it turns into something nearly impossible.”
“Thankfully, Bishop’s been helping,” Patty added. “He’s been such a blessing. He’s incredibly knowledgeable in so many areas.”
“Huh,” Chloe grunted as she glanced down at the paper in her hand. It was a jumble of words that didn’t really seem to make any sense. “What is this, and what makes it weird?” she asked, giving it a shake.
“It was strong,” Caleb said simply.
“What do you mean?” Chloe still didn’t get why that made it interesting.
“One of those signals, the one who signs off with ‘B’, is close enough for me to easily pick it up when scanning, although I’ve only heard parts of two transmissions now.”
“How close?” Chloe asked, her interest piqued.
“Closer than the Pony Express station, but it’s impossible really to say where. I figure it’s coming from a private radio operator somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of here.”
“This doesn’t seem to really say anything,” Chloe said, frowning at the seemingly random words.
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed. “I think that was the end of a one-sided transmission. Whoever they were talking to didn’t answer. The other one was slightly more fascinating.”
“Can I see it?” Chloe asked. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt compelled to see more.
Caleb smiled good-naturedly and began flipping through a notebook. “I keep everything filed by date,” he explained. “It was about a week ago. Ah! Here it is.”
Chloe accepted the document and then leaned back in the chair. As she read through it, the sense of unease she’d begun to experience intensified. Sitting up straighter, she read it a second time:
ALL SAFE. ARRIVED AT OFFICE. – H
CURRENT STATUS OF FARM? WILL RENDEZVOUS WHEN ABLE. – B
FARM AT TTT SECURE. WILL STAND BY. – H
HARD COPY. – B
Her stomach suddenly sour, Chloe fought against placing all of the various pieces of the puzzle into place. She didn’t want to see the completed image. Except her brain didn’t work that way. She was gifted, as her teachers called it. Only Chloe wasn’t feeling especially gifted at that moment, sitting there in the shadowy basement under Mercy, holding what was likely something only she and a couple of other people would understand. Because she knew Hicks, and she knew he’d been going to the Trek Thru Trouble office. And she knew Bishop.
Or did she?
Chapter 25
RUSSELL
Henry’s Hollow, Near Mercy, Montana
The opening to the mine in the side of the hill was unimpressive and Russell paused at the threshold, wondering if the exertion would be worth it. Glancing back over his shoulder, he took in the dreary scene behind him. The field housing the natural spring had been transformed from a picturesque landscape to a muddy pit with a rough-looking shack in the middle of it.
The builders were calling it a water shed, and were quite pleased with it. They’d even made a sign to hang over the door. The sloping road and area in front of the shed had been turned into a quagmire by the wagons coming and going during and after the storms moving through. They’d begun to use pavers someone found in an attempt to build a road, but Russell wasn’t impressed with their progress so far.
Where others saw an accomplishment of great proportions, Russell saw yet another vain attempt to control something not meant to be controlled. The thought buoyed his resolve and he turned back to the tunnel with more vigor. If what they’d said about Henry’s Hollow in the meeting was true, he might have found his exodus strategy.
It was getting late in the afternoon and the last water run of the day had just left. They were shorthanded at the spring for several reasons, so Russell had volunteered to help out. The other woman overseeing the loading process rode out with the last wagon, and when Russell found himself alone at the spring, it was the perfect opportunity to explore.
Twenty feet in, the slant downward was enough to cut off most of the light offered by the opening and so Russell took a solar lamp from his pocket. The solar panels were an interesting phenomenon. So long as the devices weren’t hooked up to a battery when the gamma ray tore through the planet, they were unharmed. Ironic, really.
Holding the rather weak light out in front of him, Russell studied the rotting wooden support beams with a critical eye. Lode mining was a dangerous occupation that took off in Montana around the turn of the century, and there weren’t many that operated in the area beyond the 1950s. At least, that was what Dr. Olsen told him when he’d inquired about the local history that morning.
True to how it was depicted, the tunnel branched off a hundred feet in and Russell followed the smaller passageway to the left. He could immediately see a haze of faint daylight a short distance ahead. Encouraged, he continued toward it and in less than five minutes found himself standing at the opening to what could only be described as a grand cavern.
Russell estimated it to be the size of two football fields and at the apex was seventy-five feet tall. There were two openings in the roof of the structure that the fire chief had called chimneys. They allowed in enough light that Russell could see a fair amount of the chamber. Stalactites hung down in the farthest reaches, where water slowly worked its way down from the chimneys and dripped into small pools on the far side of the cave.
Turning in a half-circle, he envisioned it as the industrious townspeople did: covered in rich soil and eventually turning into a sea of wheat or hay. Russell tsked as the image faded and was replaced instead with the hollow as it was meant to be, free of mankind’s influence and interference. Only, it was already marred by the remnants of Mercy’s original settlers.
Stepping carefully down on to the floor of the cave, Russell studied the rusting tools scattered near his feet. A broken wooden cart lay on its side amongst them, its usefulness long faded. A large boulder close to the artifacts was partially defaced by the graffiti of the modern-day Mercy teens who were proud to leave their mark.
Disgusted by the blatant disrespect, Russell turned from the rock and ignored the relics, heading for a stack of crates farther back in the shadows. His pulse quickened as he saw the faded markings on the sides of the wooden boxes. The fire chief and Sheriff Waters had been right, there was an alarming amount of old dynamite.
Counting the crates, Russell discovered there was a total of ten that supposedly weighed fifty pounds each. Not all of them were obviously sweating, but enough were to make it impressive that none of the obnoxious kids entering the cave over the years had blown themselves up.
Some of the crates were open and a few sticks were displaced, so Russell imagined an extra element of danger to entering the cave was the dare to touch the dynamite. Fortunately for the kids, the nearest ones hadn’t degraded to the point that any chemicals had sweated out of it to then crystalize into a highly volatile substance.
Cautiously, Russell walked around the boxes and spotted one at the bottom near the back that was covered in the telltale clumps of whitish material. He took a measured step back and then went over to some of the other discarded materials. After only a few minutes of searching, he found what he was after; a large roll of detonating cord. It was pretty typical to store both the explosives and cord together, so he wasn’t surprised, although it was a relief. He would have been able to rig something else, but having the cord made everything so much easier.
The nice thing about dynamite was that it really hadn’t changed much in over a hundred years of use. It was essentially an absorbent material soaked in nitroglycerin. As an explosive, the older it was, the less stable it became and was easier to detonate. It had been over twenty years since Russell first learned about dynamite, though it wasn’t somethin
g you easily forgot.
After running away from home as a teen, he had experienced several different jobs. The one he’d stayed with the longest was a large and prosperous logging company. He didn’t have his CDL and couldn’t drive a truck, but he eventually worked his way up to a hooktender and it paid good money. Enough to get him started in college after a few years. In those early months on the job, he was basically a mule for whatever needed to be done. The initial phase of a clear-cut was to make a road, and in order to carve a road into the side of a mountain, you needed dynamite. A lot of dynamite. Russell may not have been certified to handle it, but he did everything else, and he learned. He always learned.
While he didn’t have the knowledge to determine the yield of the explosion that would be caused by five hundred pounds of dynamite, any idiot could figure out it would be big. More than big. It would be massive.
An added benefit of the old dynamite was that he wouldn’t have to rig the detonator cord directly to the blasting caps. There was enough unstable material there that all it needed was one trigger. The cord was a high-speed fuse, but it would still take long enough to burn through the whole line so that he’d have time to get to a safe enough distance.
“How far away is safe?” Russell asked the empty cavern. Rubbing at his chin, he tilted his head and looked up at the chimneys, considering the depth of the chamber. The mountain was already riddled with tunnels, weakening it. At the least, he figured the spring would easily be destroyed and anyone near it, killed. At best, the blast could bring the whole mountainside down, the resulting landslide burying up to half the town.
The new mayor’s vigilante brigade wouldn’t be back for at least two days and then everyone would be busy getting ready for the town barbeque on the Fourth of July. Russell grinned and started whistling the national anthem. While there wouldn’t be any bombs bursting in the air, he could certainly give them a memorable show.
Taking the detonator cord, he hid it under the remains of the old cart. It wasn’t likely that anyone else would be in the cave in the next couple of days but there was no need to be careless. He’d hate to lose the useful material.
Wiping his hands off on his jeans, Russell took one last fleeting look at Henry’s Hollow and felt a strong sense of synchronicity. It was something he’d experienced occasionally throughout his life, typically when he first met one of his victims. Lately, it was on a grander scale.
His eyes bright with excitement, Russell reluctantly backed out of the cavern. He had a funeral to officiate.
Chapter 26
JAMES
Master Sergeant, US Marines, 1st Force Reconnaissance
Somewhere in Central Montana
The blades of the helo slowly rotated behind them as the motor whined down, kicking up dirt and debris from the abandoned highway. After a long night of waiting for the sun to rise so they could get over the mountains, the rugged group of soldiers and lone diplomat made it to their destination on barely more than fumes.
James squinted up at the tree-covered mountains of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Although he’d hiked and camped in them for most of his life, it was always awe-inspiring. Even more so when you were dropped into the middle of them in a sputtering helicopter.
“Moving him has opened the wound back up,” Flores directed to James. He was helping Hawk limp down the road and a fresh trickle of blood was oozing through the gauze wrapped around his calf. The corporal looked around at the uninhabited landscape. “I’d really like to get a few stitches in this, sooner than later.”
Senator Jenson glanced at her head of security and put a hand out in front of James. When he only slowed but didn’t stop, her face clouded with anger. “Stop!” she shouted, while planting her feet and stubbornly blocking his way. “You need to start giving me some answers, Sergeant. I don’t even know where we are and I’ve left behind all—” Her voice caught and she looked away from James, clenching her jaw and staring at the large pine trees hugging the road.
James exchanged a look with Jay and then Lucas. Corporal Lance and Sergeant Lee had stayed back with the pilot to guard the helicopter on the off chance anyone armed tried to approach it. He’d intentionally landed a few miles away from his target for that reason, although so far, even with the loud arrival there wasn’t another soul to be seen.
Emotional conversations weren’t his forte and James had avoided speaking with the woman as much as possible. But she had a point and he knew the senator deserved some sort of explanation. “For now, our mission is to locate my father and then get you both to a safe place. From there, we’ll work on getting your family.”
“And we’re accomplishing that by flying around the skies of Montana until we run out of gas?” the senator retorted, clearly unimpressed with the plan.
James had refused to tell her or Hawk where they were headed. The ex-soldier understood why, but the senator was a harder sell. It was for the same reason his own men were often left out of the details of an assignment. If something went sideways, there was less chance of any sensitive information getting out. In this case, James was trying to protect the suspected location of his dad. It was something General Montgomery sought, and he would do anything necessary to prevent the general from getting it. If that meant having to babysit an irate senator, James could live with that.
“That building we saw from the air is a couple more miles up ahead,” James explained, moving around Senator Jenson and motioning for his men to follow. “It belongs to an organization my father volunteered for and there’s a good chance that’s where he was when the gamma ray hit. I found information that indicated he was on vacation during the event and I know he had plans to come here sometime this summer.”
“What makes you think he’d still be there?” Hawk asked. Though he was pale and clearly in pain, he was still moving and James was impressed with his resilience.
“Because it’s what I would have done,” he said simply. “For whatever reason, he doesn’t want to be found. I know my dad. For him to still be dark, it either means he’s dead or else it’s intentional. If it’s the latter, I think we’ll find him here. The office is isolated, remote, and likely well-stocked with survival gear. It’s a good place for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”
“Except by someone who would know he’s there,” Senator Jenson said thoughtfully. “And if he was on that list and already on General Montgomery’s radar, then I’m guessing he was already under some intense scrutiny prior to the flashpoint. What makes you think you’re the only one who knows about this place?”
James glanced over at the senator and raised his eyebrows in silent approval. “I knew better than to ask why, but the time my dad spent here was off the grid. He worked under an alias and I’m pretty sure he covered any trace of his involvement.”
“And this was normal to you?” the senator asked, rolling her shoulders.
James chuckled. “I didn’t know what normal was until I was old enough to understand that my friend’s families were different. My dad’s been in the military my whole life and worked special ops, including black, since I was a kid. I learned early on not to ask questions, because they wouldn’t be answered.”
“And if he isn’t here?” Hawk asked. “What then? Because that bird isn’t going to take us much farther unless you happen to have some jet fuel lying around out here somewhere.”
“It might be a good place to lie low for a few days,” James said. “I know the area, and we aren’t far from Malmstrom Air Force base. I’ve got some potential contacts there.”
Senator Jenson nodded and looked somewhat relieved. “Okay. That’s a beginning, at least.”
“You think they got a decent field kit at this place?” Flores asked, handing Hawk off to Lucas to get a break.
“It’s a survivalist outfit that takes people on long treks,” James explained. “I’m pretty sure they’ve got some advanced first aid gear.”
James caught a flicker of movement off to his left, a shadow
moving in between a stand of ponderosa pines. Without reacting, he casually moved his right hand out away from his body and made a slight motion to Jay. His friend responded with a mere nod of his head and then slowed his step until he was several paces behind James.
When the movement came again, the two men reacted as one, swinging their rifles around simultaneously toward the potential threat. “Show yourself!” James bellowed, his deep voice echoing through the valley.
“James?”
James pivoted around to face the opposite side of the road, where the new voice had originated. Moving agilely from the woods was a man he recognized, and a brief flash of anticipation blossomed in his chest until he forced the emotional reaction down. He knew the soldier, but his being there didn’t make any sense.
“You can stand down, Sergeant,” the man said with authority, his hands weaponless and out to his side. “It’s okay, Adam!” he shouted. “Ben! You guys can come out.” James shifted slightly to observe two teen boys emerge from the trees. “We’re cool here. Right, James?”
James studied the rugged appearance of the man. He was wearing hiking clothes that were torn and dirty, but his face and hair looked recently washed. Though he’d clearly been roughing it, his face wasn’t sallow or haggard like so many other survivors they’d seen over the past few weeks.
His name was Captain Brandon Hampton. He was an intelligence officer who had worked for his father for the past four years. James had only met him a few times as he and his father had become more distant, but the fact that the captain was there was both encouraging and confusing.
James lowered his M4 the rest of the way and motioned for his men to do the same. The teens appeared to be unarmed and had come to stand behind Hampton, glancing nervously at the soldiers. “What are you doing here, Ha—”
