He’d grown to hate that sound.
“What is it, J.C.? Not another crisis, I hope.”
“I hope not, too, sir, but the comm. room forwarded a message from Forward Operating Base Westwall and I thought you should see it.”
“Send it to me,” he said with a resigned tone.
He had to read it twice before his tired mind understood the ramifications. Then he keyed the intercom. “They’re bringing this woman to Prime?” he said to Schiller.
“Yes, sir, they left Westwall late this afternoon.”
“But they didn’t say where she’s from?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Call Communications and tell them to get in touch with Westwall. I want to know every detail.”
#
0121 hours
At first Sergeant Schiller thought his boss was praying, and he took a backward step out of the Crystal Palace. But while the fingertips touched in a praying pose, Angriff’s index fingers were in the corners of his eyes. Schiller had never seen that position before and wasn’t sure what it meant.
“What is it, J.C.?” Angriff asked without looking up.
“I’m sorry if this is a bad time.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Not long, no more than a few minutes. I can come back.”
“No, give it to me now. There won’t be a better time anytime soon. What have you got?”
“Colonel Kordibowski thought you should know the latest with this young woman being brought in by Westwall.”
Angriff sat back. “Kordibowski?”
“There’s a memo on your computer, sir. Once Colonel Santorio learned where this new woman is from, she sent it to S-2. Colonel K. didn’t want them to bring her all the way in because he didn’t want her to know our location. He ordered Westwall to detour into Prescott.”
“Smart. Go on.”
“Once they found out where she was from, the colonel decided he needed to interview her personally and ordered her brought here for further evaluation. She claims to be from Creech Air Force Base.”
Angriff stood without realizing it. “Creech?”
“Yes, sir. And Area Fifty-One.”
#
0137 hours
Arranged in numerical order, starting with the S-1, the offices of the command staff opened onto the main hallway near the Clamshell. Angriff passed that doorway and entered the one labeled S-2 Intelligence. A corporal sitting behind a standard metal Army desk jumped to attention when he walked in.
But Angriff waved a salute and motioned her at ease. “Is Colonel Kordibowski in his quarters?”
“No, sir, he’s in his office. He has the young woman from Creech in with him.”
“Please tell him I’m here.”
Within seconds, Kordibowski opened his door and invited Angriff inside. Sitting before the colonel’s desk was a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, with bronzed skin and long black hair with sun-bleached streaks of brown. Kordibowski offered his own chair to Angriff, but he declined and sat in one of the metal chairs next to the woman.
“Nado, this is General Angriff, our commanding officer. Sir, this is Lucia Tornado Alvarez, but she goes by Nado”
“Hiya, General, nice to know you. I’ve been telling Colonel K. we could sure use some help up at Creech.”
“Pleasure meeting you, Nado. So Creech is still a functioning Air Force base?”
“I’m not sure about that. If you mean do they still fly planes, the answer’s no. I’ve lived there all my life and never seen anything fly, ever, except once when I was kid. I saw something high overhead, I don’t know what it was, but that’s all. There’s no fuel left that’s any good, and nobody knows how to work on the planes. You guys don’t have any JP-8, do you?”
Their perplexed looks told her all she needed to know. “That’s the jet fuel the aircraft used, so maybe you don’t have any. But, General, to answer your question about the base still functioning, if you mean do people still live there, the answer is yes.”
“But there are planes.”
“Oh, yeah, lots of them.”
“General,” Kordibowski said, “the way I read the situation is that a fairly large number of people live there, but for the most part they came to the base after The Collapse, having nowhere else to go. Not too many of those original people are still alive, and the ones there now are their children and grandchildren and stragglers. The base appears to have no power sources beyond a few homemade generators, and the communications systems all failed long ago.”
“What do we know about these jet fuels?”
“You mean that we may have on hand? Nothing yet; I haven’t had a chance to investigate.”
“That’s a priority after we’re done here. What about Area Fifty-One?”
“That’s a different story.” Kordibowski turned to Nado and motioned for her to speak up.
“Yeah, about Fifty-One… Fifty-One is off-limits. Those guys are batshit crazy. We used to couldn’t even ride across their land. Now we can, but we’ve gotta stay away from the buildings. If you try to go inside one of them, they’ll shoot your ass. Before I left General Kando, he’s the C.O. at Creech, he told me that Fifty-One needed me. That’s a joke we all tell because those guys don’t talk to us. If we get close, they shoot.”
“How do they eat?”
She shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“What brought you here, Nado?”
“I ran into another scraper… Do you know what a scraper is?”
“Yes, Idaho Jack is actually here at Prime as we speak.”
“Jack’s still alive? Great, I haven’t seen him in a long time. I like him… Where was I? Oh, yeah, what brought me here. I ran into a scraper named Jingle Bob…”
“Y’all have some colorful names,” Angriff said.
Nado wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she went on with her story. “Bob told me about these big battles that happened near Prescott and Phoenix, and he’d heard there were real American units operating down here. We’ve had a lot of problems in the past few months with a group of raiders on horseback who keep attacking our farms and stealing our livestock. Two of them tried to rape me right after I met with Jingle Bob.”
Angriff sat forward. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “I killed one and captured the other.”
“What’s the story with these raiders?”
Kordibowski took over the narrative. “They showed up out of nowhere two months ago, hundreds of them. Nobody knows where they came from or where they are based. The only thing known for certain is that each man has the letters G- R burned into his forearm.”
“Burned… you mean like you’d brand a cow?”
Kordibowski turned to Nado and she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“It is my understanding that this mark is exactly like a branded cow. They also wear red bandanas tied around their heads.”
“We call them Red Riders,” Nado said.
Angriff shook his head. “How far is Creech from here?”
“Road miles?” Kordibowski asked.
“No, air.”
“More than two hundred.”
“I want to establish contact ASAP. Nado, if I send a contact mission to Creech, would you be willing to go with them? They would be flying.”
“You mean in a real plane?”
“A helicopter.”
“Well, fuck yeah, I’ll go! Oh… sorry. General Kando warned me you might not like that kind of language.”
Angriff smiled his best fatherly smile. “I’ve heard it before.”
#
Captain Wu was about to fall asleep when Kordibowski asked him to take Nado to the mess hall. Beaming, he led the way out of the S-2’s office.
“Now we know who sent that message,” Angriff said when they were gone.
“This Jingle Bob fellow?”
“Has to be. It explains everything. We need to get someone up there,
somehow. Damn, I wish General Fleming was back.”
“Allow me to point out that he is merely a phone call away.”
“Radio phone, Rip, not a land line. It’s not secure.”
“What are your orders now, sir?”
“Continue doing what you’re doing and—” He was interrupted by a knock on Kordibowski’s office door.
At the colonel’s call, a corporal stuck in her head. “Message for General Angriff.” She handed it to him and didn’t dawdle shutting the door.
“When it rains…” Angriff passed the tablet over to Kordibowski, who read it aloud.
“It’s from the cavalry. Following one hundred plus horsemen heading east of Seligman. Suggest FOB Westwall be ready… These have to be part of who Nado was talking about.”
“So we have to assume they’re enemies.”
“I believe they are. Regardless, we have no choice. It would be imprudent to think otherwise.”
#
Chapter 56
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 mile east of Hawthorne, NV
0857 hours, April 20
One of the lenses in Jingle Bob’s binoculars was cracked when he’d found them, but they were Zeiss. He’d found other binoculars during his scraping years with both lenses intact, but he preferred one Zeiss lens to two of some others. Standing on a small hill, he focused on the abandoned army base called Camp Navajo, once known officially as the Hawthorne Army Depot.
“You said it was abandoned,” Nuff said, focusing his own binoculars.
“It was.”
“It ain’t now.”
“No, it’s not.”
A knot of horsemen gathered around a fire on the outskirts of the ghost town of Hawthorne. Bob had scraped it several times and knew that no one had lived there for decades. Until now.
“There’s a lot of ’em.”
“Yeah.”
“This must be where them other riders came from.”
Earlier in the day, they’d hidden from several hundred armed riders heading east.
“Yeah.”
“You ever seen anything like this?”
“Not up here in Nevada. The Sevens ride in big groups, but I’ve never seen them this far north and west.”
“So who are they?”
“Hell if I know.” Bob slid down the hill to his horse. “C’mon, Nuff, we’ve gotta ride.”
“The horses need a rest, Bob. Me, too.”
“There’s some hills a few miles southeast of here. We’ll stop there. There’s a spring and a cave where we can hole up for the night.”
Both men wanted to gallop away, but the day had been hotter than usual, they and their horses needed rest, and so they didn’t push the pace. A rusty metal sign they passed identified the road as the Veterans’ Memorial Highway. Once out of sight of Hawthorne, they were again flanked on both sides by empty desert.
Neither man spoke until they’d turned into a valley that snaked between low hills leading south. The horses plodded forward into the heart of the ridgeline. Once out of sight of the highway, Bob’s horse lifted its head. Its nostrils flared. It whinnied and sped up, and the rest of the horses followed.
“They smell water,” Bob said.
“Better be close.”
The backside of one hill looked like it had been sheared away with a giant knife, exposing the rock beneath. Halfway up a gravel slope loomed the dark opening of a cave.
“That’s one big ass cave,” Nuff said. “Anybody in there?”
“Rattlesnakes.”
“Human or the other kind?”
Bob smiled.
The cave mouth opened into a large hall near the entrance that slanted downward into an ever-narrowing chamber. To the right a pool of water ran into the darkness. The horses almost knocked them over heading for it, but Nuff held them off until Bob had filled their canteens. When he let the horses go, they crowded each other to get at the cold, clear water.
“Damn, that’s good,” Bob said.
They were about to sit on a large boulder when a voice rang out from the blackness below. “Get the hell outa here ’fore I shoot.”
Instinct took over and both men slid to their knees behind the rock. Bob yelled, “Hold up now! We just wanted some water.”
“Get it and get gone!”
“Can’t do it. We’re stayin’ the night. We’ll be gone at first light.”
“That ain’t gonna work, partner. You need to git.”
“Sorry, that ain’t gonna happen, either. Look, we were gonna stay in Hawthorne, but it’s filled with horsemen. We didn’t like their look so we came here. I’ve camped here before, and weren’t nobody here. Maybe you’ve heard of me; my name’s Jingle Bob.”
Silence fell for ten seconds. “I’ve heard the name, but how do I know it attaches to you?”
“Would I be here instead of Hawthorne if I could help it?”
“Still don’t mean you’re that Jingle Bob guy.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, friend. I ain’t never had to prove who I was before.”
Nuff looked at him like yes, you have but Bob waved him off.
“You ever heard of Taco Ted?” Nuff yelled. Bob pursed his lips and frowned.
“Why?”
“He was my dad.”
“Yeah? What do they call you?”
“My name is Ted. Some people call me Nuff.”
They heard some rustling followed by gravel crunching underfoot.
“I’m comin’ up. If you’re plannin’ to shoot, shoot me good and get it over with.”
The only light came from the cave mouth. They heard the man’s footfalls as he grew near and both of them readied their rifles; you could never assume anything in the wilds, not if you wanted to keep breathing.
As the figure drew near, the dim light picked out his features. The first thing they saw was his empty hands, held up and to either side. He had a medium build, worn nondescript clothes, and high boots sewn together with a heavy cord. A sure stride indicated he was younger than his leathery skin made him appear.
He stopped ten feet in front of them. “If you’re gonna kill me, go ahead, but make it quick.”
“You gotta gun?” Bob asked.
The man pointed with a thumb back the way he’d come. “Down there.”
“What about a name?”
“Joshua Dalton.”
Bob leaned his rifle against the rock, stood, and extended his hand. “Jingle Bob. This here’s Nuff.”
#
Before doing anything else, they tended to the horses, giving them the last of the forage they’d brought with them and making sure they were safe in a corner of the front chamber.
Within half an hour, they’d built a fire near the cave entrance from brush and deadwood scattered around the valley outside. Dalton pulled out a pot, filled it with water, and soon had it heating over the fire. Once the water came to a rolling boil, he threw in a handful of leaves and flowers. Neither Bob nor Nuff asked what the leaves were, because they both knew it was creosote, commonly used in the desert to make a fragrant tea.
“You got any honey?” Dalton asked.
“I had a whole pot in my house, but it’s all burnt up.”
“Don’t help us now.”
Nuff related the story about Bob coming to the house and the fight with the bandits. He left out the radio. They shared what food they’d brought, some jerked venison and pemmican, along with three ears of corn they threw in with the tea. Dalton added a welcome slab of salted boar, some fresh miner’s lettuce, and prickly pear halves. They washed it all down with cold water and the tea.
“They got here a couple months ago.” Dalton’s left eye twitched when he spoke. “Some of them army buildings are still in good shape. I started livin’ there last year, or maybe the one before that. I hid when they showed up. I figured they’d be gone pretty quic
k. I was wrong.
“They moved into the base, lookin’ for guns and ammo. I know for a fact them bunkers are sealed tight. They tried breakin’ in. When that didn’t work, they tried blasting. That really didn’t work. I tried to find a place in town where I might not be seen, but they was too many. I came out here a few days ago. Now you’re here.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“Here’s all I know. They got a mark on their left arm, right here, above the hand. It’s two letters, G and R. I heard one of ’em say he hoped they wintered here and not in North Dakota, wherever the hell that is.”
“I been there once,” Bob said. “It wasn’t during winter, but I hear tell the snow gets over a man’s head. It’s a helluva long way from here. Six weeks’ ride, at the least. Some of it’s over rough country, too. If these people came from North Dakota, they’re here to stay.”
“I didn’t know it but there was a family livin’ in the ruins of the city. Mom, dad, looked like three little ones, all boys. I was hidin’ under a collapsed house, hopin’ they wouldn’t find me. They dragged them people into a cleared space and shot the father and all three of them kids. The mother was screamin’ but they took her into another house up the street that still had walls… I slipped off as soon as I could. I still heard her a long ways down the road.”
“Nothing you could do?”
“Shit fire,” Dalton said, “they was fifty of them if there was one. No, ’tweren’t nothin’ I could do. I don’t know what I’m gonna do now.” Under a messy shock of hair he glanced up at Bob.
Bob and Nuff exchanged glances. Nuff shook his head but Bob nodded. “We’re riding south,” he said. Nuff turned away. “I got a spare horse you can use, but no saddle.”
“Done!” Dalton said.
“You can ride with no saddle?” Nuff challenged.
“I got rope and a blanket. That’s all I need.”
“We’re riding fast,” Bob warned. “And by fast, I mean pushing ourselves to the limit.”
Standing at the Edge Page 27
