Will nodded. “I understand that, but I’d like to be a part of this.”
“Not happening. We need you on sentry watching the valley tonight with the Wimmers and Lloyd. End of discussion.”
Gary was never that firm. He was an easygoing guy and never shut down conversations like that. That he did was an indication of just how concerned he was about this operation.
“I need to check the .338,” Gary said.
He picked up a walkie-talkie from the table and keyed the mic. “This is Gary. I’m going to check zero on my .338. I may have to fire a couple of shots if I need to adjust the scope. Just wanted to warn everyone not to be concerned by the shooting.”
There was a chorus of acknowledgements. Satisfied, Gary picked up the rifle and went outside. A distance from the house, the valley road crossed over a bridge. A sign there read Narrow Bridge. Gary’s rangefinder gave him a distance of 653 yards from the back porch of the house.
He laid prone on the carport, dropped the Atlas bipod, and flipped up his lens caps. He adjusted the turrets for the distance and returned to the scope. He placed the crosshairs on the letter “O” in the word “Narrow.” He chambered a round, flipped off the safety, and returned to position. He exhaled, and between breaths he squeezed the trigger.
The .338 boomed and a cloud of dust erupted from the porch floor. There was a sound that resembled a tiny click and a hole appeared dead center of the letter. Gary could not help but smile.
Ellen was upset with Jim on all fronts. She was upset he’d come up with this plan of attacking a military force and somehow felt like it was a good idea, and upset that he’d set this entire thing in motion without even having the courtesy to tell her he was doing so. She was extremely upset that he had included Pete and Charlie in his plan, assuring that she was not only going to lose her husband but she was going to lose her son too.
To make matters worse, Nana had teamed up with her. In addition to Ellen’s lecture, Nana was explaining to Jim that he really should be considering turning his guns in and taking his family to the safety of the comfort camp. Instead, he was basically committing an act of terror against agents of the government and making his son an accomplice in his whole sordid plan.
When he’d heard enough, Jim raised his hands to silence the room. “I’m leaving at first light. If this is my last day on Earth, is this how you want to spend it?”
Jim thought that might make everyone chill out and relax. Instead, they apparently became hung up on the idea that he was going to die. In less than a minute, everyone in the entire house, except for Jim, was sobbing.
Jim, who struggled with compassion on the best of days, had no idea where to go from here. He stood up.
“I’m going to split some wood.”
27
Everyone creaked to life around daybreak the next morning. Any lingering hard feelings with family were put to rest since everyone understood the gravity of good-byes anymore. They hugged, kissed, and cried, then each warrior hardened his resolve and geared up. Be they farmers, IT professionals, office workers, nurses—none of that mattered now. Each was a soldier in a war to preserve the country they knew and loved. Their country was dark now and its people beaten down, but as the folks of this valley rose to their feet, hopefully more would too. If they didn’t, and if all from the valley perished in their fight, it would be for nothing.
Laden with gear, they assembled at Jim’s barn. The night had remained above freezing, though just barely. A cold fog lay over them but should be gone by mid-morning. There was now more ground showing than snow and, though it was a muddy mess, it was a welcome sight.
Folks pitched their gear into the back of the first truck. Ford, who’d driven trucks in the Army, was driving with Gary riding shotgun. Jim would be driving the truck hauling the explosives with Hugh as his wingman. Ford’s truck was going to tow the horse trailer with mounts for Pete, Charlie, and Randi. The three had hit several stores yesterday and scrounged up a couple of dozen air horns. Apparently in the looting that had ensued since last summer, no one had seen a dire need for air horns.
A critical step performed just before dark last night was the loading of the explosive components. The bags of fertilizer Jim had obtained from the farm supply were packed into the truck, along with every barrel that could be found in the entire valley. Pete, Charlie, Gary, and Will had scrounged the valley for the barrels, and also five gallon buckets with lids that could be used to transport the diesel fuel. All of the ingredients were packed onto Jim’s truck and Hugh would supervise mixing the ingredients when—and if—they reached the cave.
Despite his intention of not going on the operation, Scott showed up with three of his crew, all carrying boxes of MREs for Jim’s team. They divvied them up and gave each person several meals for his pack.
“We’re burning daylight,” Jim announced when it seemed that everyone had accomplished the preliminaries. “Let’s head to the quarry next. Maintain radio silence unless you see something hinky.”
“Hinky?” Pete asked.
“Fishy,” Jim clarified. “Something you think the others might need to be aware of.”
“Got it.”
The teams wished each other luck and loaded up. Pete gave everyone a long hug and there were more tears. Jim hugged and kissed his family, promising they’d be back by morning.
The Silverstone Quarry was a twenty-five minute drive from Jim’s house in the best of times. After around nine months or so the roads were looking like crap. There were abandoned cars, trash, and tree limbs around every corner. On several occasions they had to get out and drag large limbs out of the way.
The quarry itself lay along a barren section of road. The quarry was old, having been worked sporadically since pioneer days. The road leading to the office area was open but the yellow pipe gates leading back to the working area of the quarry were locked. Ford backed his truck up to the gate and Bird used the oxy-acetylene torch to burn the lock off.
Parts of the quarry were flooded. Those seemed like old works that hadn’t been reopened. Jim wondered if anyone had stocked them. Someone had once told him that quarries made good trout waters.
They reached a second gate and Bird jumped out to cut it. Jim left his truck idling and joined him. “Any idea where the blasting shack might be?”
“They refer to it as an explosives magazine,” Bird said. “We should be close. I don’t think we’re to the working face of the quarry yet. It probably looks like a red shipping container.”
After a few more minutes of sloshing around the gray mud of the quarry road they found what they were looking for. It was exactly like Bird had described it. He already had Ford spinning his truck to back up to the door. Jim started to pull up beside him but Bird waved him off.
“You should take everyone back to a safe distance until I get this cut open. It should be safe but we don’t know what’s in here. There could be some volatile stuff that might react poorly if a spark gets inside.”
“Then be careful,” Jim warned.
Bird grinned. “I got this.”
Jim did as he was told, backing his truck and taking everyone with him while Bird cut the lock free, then swung the door open. Jim immediately drove his truck back to the explosives magazine and backed it up to the door.
Bird was coiling the torch hose back up and storing it away. “No matter how fancy these things get, most of them still rely on a padlock. Once you burn the padlock off, you’re home free.”
Jim stuck his head in the door of the container. “So what are we looking for again?”
“Tovex,” Bird called as he finished with the hose. “Could be in cardboard boxes or even in tubes that look like sausage.”
Jim shined a flashlight around the inside of the container. There were quite a few things in there and he could figure out what most of it was. Bird and Hugh, however, were sharing glances with an evil gleam in their eye. Jim knew that Hugh had some dangerous tendencies but he’d always known Bird as a lai
d-back farmer who just liked to shoot a lot. A whole lot.
“Can we use any of this?” Jim asked.
“We can use all of this,” Hugh said, shining his own light around. “As a matter of fact, we should take this even if it means putting some of it in the other truck. Some of this is the prepared ANFO that doesn’t require adding diesel. There’s both Tovex and dynamite here for detonating the ANFO. There’s det cord, cast boosters, detonators—everything.”
“That shit means nothing to me,” Jim said. “Can you guys sort it out and let us know what to take?”
The two men nodded.
“Give us a line of folks and we’ll start passing,” Bird said. “Treat everything very carefully.”
Jim assembled a line of folks stretching from the explosives magazine to the back of one of the trucks. Bird and Hugh were talking among themselves in the darkened container, pointing at stuff and comparing options. When they had a plan, they started handing stuff to the man nearest to them and it worked its way down the line to the truck. When they were done, there wasn’t much left in the red metal container and both trucks were sagging on their suspensions.
“We’ll have to be careful if we hit rough road,” Jim told Ford. “I don’t want to break anything we can’t fix.”
“No shit. The ass-end of that truck is practically dragging. How much farther do we have to go?” Ford asked.
Jim pulled out his GPS unit from a pocket on his vest. “It’s twenty-two miles to where we think the cave is.”
“Then we better get back on the road,” Ford said. “That could be another hour or two depending on how bad the road is.”
“Load up!” Jim called out.
When everyone was back in the trucks, they crept back along the slimy gray roads of the quarry. Everything here, even after months of disuse, was covered in the same rock dust. When they reached the first gate they’d come through, Gary slipped out of Ford’s truck to push that gate back open. They’d closed it behind their convoy just in case anyone came along. Gary stood at the gate for a moment, not doing anything.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Jim asked.
Then Gary was running back toward the trucks, running a finger under his throat in a gesture that was clearly instructing them to kill the engines. Ford complied, then Jim did the same. Gary hopped up on Jim’s running board.
“There are engines on the main road. They’re loud. I could hear them over our trucks,” Gary said.
Ford leaned out his window. “What the hell is going on?”
Gary ran forward to let him know. While he was standing on Ford’s running board, the vehicles slipped by on the four-lane highway. The freezer trucks were likely lost in the clutter of the quarry. It would have taken someone a moment to locate them even if they were standing at the entrance to the facility and scanning with binoculars. A moving vehicle on the highway had little chance of spotting them.
Still, it was clearly a military patrol of some sort. Two vehicles moving slowly, a gunner on top. The vehicles were painted in a blotchy deep green camo.
“Hugh, go forward and take a look. I don’t want to pull out just as more of them are coming along.”
Hugh slipped out and took off at a run, heading past the gate and toward a hill near the quarry entrance. He hunched low and moved slower as he reached a more exposed position. He spent nearly a minute scanning before he waved an arm for the vehicles to move forward. When they reached main road, he appeared at the driver’s window of Jim’s vehicle.
“They’re gone but that would seriously fuck up our day if we run into one of their patrols. I’m not certain that gun would detonate these explosives but I’m not certain it wouldn’t,” Hugh said. “Any chance of an alternative route on a back road?”
“Tell Ford to let me pass and I’ll lead the way,” Jim said. “I think I know a different way but it will take a little longer.”
“I’ll tell him,” Hugh said, dropping from the running board.
Jim studied his GPS and confirmed a few things. He was fairly certain he knew an alternative route but he wasn’t sure exactly how it connected to his destination. By the time Hugh was back in the cab of the truck, Jim was squared away.
“You figure something out?” Hugh asked.
Jim nodded. “I’m on it.
28
It took them over two hours to make the trip. The heavy snow had done a number on the wooded back roads, dropping trees and useless power lines across the winding road. Some of the debris may have been there from fall storms. At one point, debris littering the road became so frequent that Pete, Charlie, and Randi walked ahead of the truck, tossing limbs as they went. Gary and Hugh rode on the running boards providing security.
This area was sparsely populated. They ran across few houses and in most cases it was difficult to tell if they were occupied or not. Only one farm was clearly active, with a man and a boy that was likely his son carrying buckets from a barn to a house. When they spotted the trucks, they threw the buckets down and ran. Jim was saddened to see that the buckets were full of milk. Even though it wasn’t his milk or his loss, any waste in this time of deprivation seemed especially cruel.
As they closed in on the area where Jim suspected the cave would be found, his eyes moved between the road and his GPS. He was examining topographic data, looking for the spot where the lines indicated a cliff. In better times, this would have been a crime, driving in a distracted manner. Yet it was likely the smallest of the crimes Jim would commit today. That thought almost brought a smile to his face, an inside joke that only he would ever get.
Nearing what he thought was the spot, Jim spotted a wide pull-off on the shoulder of the road. He suspected this was it. As more and more climbers showed up to spend time on the cliff, the state eventually accommodated them and expanded the shoulder. The area was probably wide enough for a dozen cars but just barely provided enough room for the two freezer trucks and the horse trailer. Jim was forced to laugh at himself again as he tried to pull his truck fully out of the road by force of habit. Then he realized it was pointless. There would be no traffic.
Jim killed his engine and hopped out of the truck. Ford did the same.
“Ford and Gary, you guys keep an eye on the road. We might have attracted some attention. Keep an eye out for anyone following on foot. Pete and Charlie, you guys take the road to the front of the vehicle. Stay in sight of the trucks but keep an eye for anyone who might be coming in this direction.”
While those guys went about their duties, the rest followed Jim to a point where the hill started sloping steeply down.
“You guys stop right here,” Jim said. “This ground is really slick. If you go down and start sliding, you might not stop until you hit the river.”
Jim had brought a climbing rope and he tied it off to a nearby tree with a bowline. He pulled a carabiner and a figure 8 belay from his vest, hooking it to the D-ring on his rigger’s belt and then clipping into the line. The rigger’s belt wouldn’t be ideal for an actual rappel but it should be sufficient for a safety device while walking on the steep, slippery terrain.
Jim unsnapped his rifle from the single point sling and handed it over to Hugh. “Hold my beer.”
“Famous last words,” Hugh replied.
There was a trail worn through the moss and thick branches. Neat cuts where branches had been pruned to open the path helped assure Jim this was the correct route. He just had to be certain it was actually the route to the cave and not just to a popular climbing spot. Then he was at the edge, the trees leaning off at acute angles and fragments of old abandoned ropes hanging in tatters or embedded in trees.
He took up the slack in his safety rope as he neared the edge. He got a gloved hand on it, ready to arrest his fall if went down. He edged closer and closer. There were still pockets of snow between the rocks and his heart beat faster as he stepped on them, certain his feet would fly out from under him at any moment. Jim loved climbing but heights scared the absolute shit out o
f him. He stared over, unable to stop himself from looking at the ground, and a nauseating wave of vertigo hit him. He choked it back, taking a deep breath, and focusing, trying to occupy his mind with anything but the awareness of the open space in front of him.
Then he saw it. Perhaps twelve to fifteen feet down from where he stood was a ledge at the mouth of the cave. While not spacious by any means, the ledge would be sufficient for one or two folks to stand on and receive the explosives. Although it would be nerve-wracking work, constantly aware of the seventy foot drop at your side, it would be manageable. If he could get down there first and secure ropes and anchors he would feel much safer about someone working with that kind of exposure.
He backtracked, reeling himself in until he reached the rest of his group. “I found it. There’s a ledge that will hold two folks. It’s going to be a lot of work but I think we have everything we need to pull it off. I just need to get down there and put some safety lines in place.”
“We’ve been talking about this,” Hugh said. “Bird and I are going.”
Jim frowned. “You guys have no climbing experience.”
“You have no explosive experience,” Hugh and Bird responded simultaneously.
“Besides,” Hugh added, “I do have climbing experience.”
“Well how the fuck am I supposed to know that?” Jim grimaced. “You won’t ever give a straight answer on anything further back than last month.”
“That’s need to know shit,” Hugh said. “You don’t need to know.”
Jim took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I’m going to set a fixed line from where we’re standing to the edge,” Hugh said. “Anyone working past this point has to be clipped into that line at all times. I’ll drop a rope and anchor it a little closer to the edge. I’m also going to set an anchor for a belay. I’ll rappel down and we can belay Bird down.”
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