“He’s got military training. That could be useful. He did manage to scare that sniper off the other day. That’s something. You don’t happen to have anything in this here bat-cave that could help find his kids, do you?”
“Well.” Jake hesitated. “I do have some pretty heavy-duty video surveillance gear set up around our property … and beyond. It archives everything in a database, so all that happened over the last few days will be there. It may take some time to manually go through, but starting with the time of the attack would make sense. A lot of the above-ground cameras got fried, but I’ve hardened all the electronics down here, with Faraday cages, extra grounding and such.”
“What’s a Faraday … actually, never mind.” Jake smiled. “If you want to show me how it works, I can do that. Then maybe you could go deal with Dawson. At this point your firm hand would be better than my coddling.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Jake smiled. “You can look through the surveillance video from the TV here. Let me show you.”
Chapter 34 ~ Chased
Once Jake gave her a few basic instructions on how to work the video surveillance gear, Maggie set to work scanning through the hours and hours of recording. Jake was a pack-rat with a lot of things. He always told her, you never know when something might come in handy. With the massive storage limits of cheap digital storage, Jake took pak-ratitis to new heights. There were literally months of video surveillance to go through. Most of it had to be done manually. It occurred to Maggie that Jake hadn’t had a reason to go through the recordings. If he had, she was convinced he would have found a better way to do it. She persisted though. The kids were out there, in trouble, and she was sitting here in a secure bunker with all the conveniences of home and enough supplies to last a year. The kids should be here. Whatever twisted events had caused them to fall into the hands of sickos had to be reversed. Kids were supposed to be protected and nurtured. She was determined that they would be returned safe and sound, no matter what it took.
Maggie started with the most recent footage. There has to be a better way of going through all this stuff, she thought. It had basic search capabilities. The computer could scan through the recordings and detect when there was movement or sound that was out of the ordinary. That made things faster. It still took valuable time. She was hoping it would find strangers snooping around the wooded areas behind their property, but no such luck. In spite of the computer filtering, there were still a lot of false positives for Maggie to review. Birds or animals were often flagged as unusual movement. Maggie was surprised just how many birds moved through the property in the course of a day. A birder’s dream, she thought, but right now, it slowed her progress. The scans also showed an extra-large black transport passing by their property multiple times. She couldn’t recall seeing that vehicle around town. She would have noticed if she had; it stood out. Considering how often it showed up on the recordings, it was strange she couldn’t recall seeing it. It was like the van only showed up when she wasn’t around. She paused the playback of the next clip. The black van parked in her driveway, and someone was getting out.
The van looked like a cross between an average family loser cruiser and an armored bank truck. The windows were tinted black, and the body was all sharp angles. It looked angry. There were extra lights mounted both on the roof and under the regular headlights. The tires reminded Maggie more of tank treads than regular rubber tires.
The driver’s door of the van swung open, and a tall man with short cropped hair got out. She paused the video to zoom in, but couldn’t place the face. It occurred to her that maybe it was one of Jake’s group of prepper buddies that she hadn’t met, but this guy didn’t really look the type. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and a black leather jacket. Driving that vehicle and dressed that way, he could have walked onto the set of some secret agent / government conspiracy movie and fit right in. Maggie thought about calling Jake to come have a look, but changed her mind, and let the video play.
The man walked briskly into the garage like he belonged there. She watched the tape for a few more minutes, and nothing happened. If there was anyone else in the van, they never got out. The resolution of the video and the tinted windows prevented her from seeing anyone inside the van. Maggie was getting apprehensive watching the video, like it was something she wasn’t supposed to see. She thought again for a second that maybe Jake should be seeing this. It’s sure to be something harmless, she thought, or Jake would have said something beforehand. Don't let your imagination get away with you.
Still nothing happened on the video. She wanted to know what the man was doing in their garage. Maggie startled and looked behind her when she heard Jake in another room. She returned to the video and pressed fast forward. Finally the man exited the garage, this time with Jake following behind him. Was Jake in the garage the entire time, Maggie wondered? She thought again that she must have met this guy before, but still couldn’t remember. Jake was saying something to the man, but he ignored Jake as got back into the vehicle. Jake appeared agitated, but the man just closed the van door. Jake walked to the driver’s door, banging his hand on the hood as he walked past. He was speaking frantically to the closed driver’s-side window, with no response from within. Eventually the van backed out of the driveway. Jake jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being clipped by the oversized side mirror. Maggie leaned into the video screen as Jake’s face came into view. He was saying something, but she couldn’t make it out.
“I can explain that,” Jake said from behind Maggie, causing her to almost jump out of her skin.
“Damn you, Jake Banner!” Maggie grabbed the center of her chest with both hands. “Why the hell would you sneak up on me like that?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.
“I didn’t think I was sneaking,” Jake said in his defense. “I just walked into the room, and you were intent on the video screen. I put a few things in the cupboards before I walked over. I thought you heard me.”
“I was a little distracted by your secret meeting with the james Bond wannabe. What the heck was all that about?” She pointed to the video still running. “Tell me that’s just one of your obsessed prepper friends that's rich enough to buy a custom zombie-hunter vehicle.”
“OK, OK.” Jake held out both hands. “he's most definitely not James Bond, and he's not one of my prepper friends.”
“I kind of figured that, so I suppose that leaves only zombie hunters?”
“Not zombie hunters, but close. They’re government agents from Homeland Security.” He smiled, less at his wit, more hoping to calm Maggie down for what he’d have to say next.
Maggie slapped him on the shoulder. “Either way, not funny. I think I’d prefer zombie hunters. At least then I’d know my husband wasn’t yelling at government agents in our driveway.”
“I wasn’t yelling. It was just a lively discussion.” Maggie crossed her arms and stared, waiting for the rest of the story. Jake took a deep breath and continued. “It has to do with Dawson.”
“Oh no. Why would Homeland Security care about Dawson? He’s a vet.” Maggie’s eyes grew wide. “Tell me he’s not some double agent spy looking to betray his country.”
“Maggie, just let me finish. No, he’s not a traitor. He’s done nothing wrong. At least nothing he had any control over. It has to do with a mission he was on over in the Middle East.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about his time in the military.”
“Yeah, no he doesn’t. I think it had a lot to do with why Lisa left him. These government fellas don’t like to talk much about it either. They’re even more secretive than Dawson. I kinda pieced the story together from both sources. It seems that Dawson was assigned to an elite group whose mission it was to exterminate a high-ranking terrorist leader.”
“How high?”
“I’m not sure. These guys don’t name names. But it was high enough for the government to still be spending money on it all these years later. Things didn’t go well
on the mission overseas. The intel they had was flawed, and they didn’t realize it till too late. Apparently, this guy they were targeting had a habit of hiding amongst civilians in places that weren’t necessarily military areas. It made him harder to track. Dawson’s team had a couple of guys that were new, and combined with the bad intel, things went bad fast the night of the mission.”
“Was Dawson one of the new guys?”
“I don’t know. Based on the little bits I’ve gotten from Dawson, I don’t think so, but who would admit to being responsible for what happened next?” Jake paused to clear his throat. “Basically, the short of it was the bad guys got away, and innocent civilians got killed. Civilians that were family members of the intended target.”
“Oh my God. Children?”
“Could have been. Like I said, these guys don’t like to name names. Anyways, the fallout from all of this was that the big bad guy went into even deeper seclusion. After that night, the military lost their element of surprise and haven’t had any luck finding clues. At least that’s what the government guys told me.”
“OK, so what’s this got to do with Dawson? He’s been home for a while now.”
“A number of guys on Dawson’s original team have either been killed or gone missing. Dawson mentioned that a couple of them died in suspiciously similar auto accidents, while others just up and left their families. He hasn’t heard from them since he’s been home.” Jake took a big breath. “So, these government guys are tracking Dawson and some of the other remaining members of his group.”
“They suspect that someone’s taking revenge on his team? Kinda clichéd, isn’t it?”
“Clichéd maybe, but that’s the way these fanatics think. An eye for an eye kinda thing. The agents believed they’d come after Dawson. They’re looking for a trail back to their original target.”
“You’re telling me that my government knowingly let crazy fanatics take pot shots at my house for the sake of tracking down an even bigger crazy fanatic in a country thousands of miles away from here? They endangered me and my family because it made their job easier?”
“Maggie, Maggie, calm down. You can’t think about it that way. You —”
“Excuse me! I can’t think about it that way? What way exactly would that be, Jake? There’s a better way, is there?”
“It’s just you have to think about the bigger —”
“And you,” Maggie interrupted again. “You knew about this all along. You knew about it, and you let it go on nonetheless. How could you?”
“Maggie, I had no choice. They know everything. They know about everything I’ve built, about the stores, about the bunker. What could I have done? Gone to war with the US government? They could have taken everything we have. I had to do what they asked.”
“Do? They actually made you do something? It wasn’t enough that you kept secrets from your family?”
“The only reason I know any of this is because they asked me to keep eyes on Dawson; to be part of their surveillance They couldn’t possibly keep tabs on every single thing that happened to Dawson, so they asked me to fill in the missing blanks.”
“You spied on this family?”
“No, just on Dawson, that was it. It wasn’t like I was happy about it, you saw the video. Did I look happy?”
“No, you didn’t, not at all.” Maggie paused to catch her breath. “It kind of explains a few things though, like why you’ve been so weird about him from the start.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know a lot in the beginning. I had a thousand suspicions about Dawson at first. I wanted to just boot him off the property, but they wouldn't let me. They said I was to do everything I could to encourage him to stay. Not sure I ever really took that to heart. I didn’t know why they were watching him at first. I thought maybe he was a terrorist or worse. I didn’t want him anywhere near my family. Eventually, they told me more things, like that Dawson hadn’t technically done anything wrong, and that he'd only followed orders. That combined with a few comments Dawson made when he was drunk painted the picture for me. I was both relieved that I wasn’t renting to a known terrorist, and a little guilty for hating a guy who had basically been screwed over most of his life.”
Maggie sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. “Life is never simple, is it?” She looked around the bunker. “This all seems so unreal. I’m sitting here buried in my own backyard bunker having a discussion with my husband who’s been secretly working for the government, spying on my sweet ole cowboy tenant who did something horrific enough for a terrorist fanatic to hunt him down. Did I miss anything?”
“Umm, yeah. There’s the whole civilization without electricity about to go down the toilet thing.”
“Right.” Maggie’s shoulders slumped as she put her face in her hands. She didn’t cry, but she certainly thought about it. “It won’t do much good, so there’s no point wasting the tears.”
“What?” Jake looked confused.
She lowered her hands and looked Jake in the eyes. “Crying. There’s no point in it, as it won’t fix any of this. All it’ll do is make me feel like a silly, weak schoolgirl, and right now that won’t get those kids back.”
Jake returned to the upper levels of the bunker. His mind raced between the current state of the country and decisions he’d made about Dawson, prepping, and what to do next. He’d always felt that he didn’t have a choice when it came to the demands from Homeland Security. He was torn between being his own man, an island of independence, and an American citizen. A country whose laws didn’t always mesh with his morals, especially as he got older. He believed that he’d made the right choices and done what was necessary for himself and his family. But now, control over his life felt out of reach.
He looked at Dawson, still passed out on the crates. It would be simple to just blame him for the problems he now faced, but that would be too easy. There were new problems ahead, and they needed to be dealt with. Maggie was right. Crying over things wasn’t going to help. He needed to do whatever he could for the sake of the kids.
Dawson started to stir. Jake gave him a good shake. “Dawson! Wake up! We’ve got work to do.” Dawson groaned and tried to roll over, but Jake pulled him back. He slapped him lightly on both cheeks. When his eyes still didn’t open, Jake slapped harder and pulled Dawson up to a sitting position. Dawson’s eyes rolled open and looked at Jake, then the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Where the hell am I?”
“You’re in my world, boy, is where you are, and you need to get with the program.” Jake pulled him to his feet. Dawson steadied himself, leaning back on the crates. “There’s no time to waste, we need to find your kids. Maggie’s working on it downstairs.”
“Downstairs? Isn’t this your shed?”
Jake had no time for this. “Dawson! The town is going to hell, we’ve been shot at, and your kids are missing. You need to wake the fuck up and be a man. I don’t care how hung over you are. Follow me. Now!”
The fog of liquor in Dawson’s brain parted, and reality came flooding back in. “Veronica? Chase? Damn, what the hell have I done?”
“What you’ve done is tried to find the answer in the bottom of a bottle. Again. If only it were that easy. This problem isn’t going away. We’re going to have to work doubly hard to fix this. Follow me.”
Jake opened the door when his cell phone chimed a text message. It was from Homeland Security. He read the message, then looked back at Dawson. “You may have just caught the biggest break of your life, son.”
Chapter 35 ~ Pickup Confessions
The first half of the drive was quiet. Jake was at the wheel, Dawson sat in the passenger seat, and Maggie occupied the rear seat of the extended cab. There wasn’t much traffic on the road, what with the majority of vehicles still out of commission. Most everyone was focused on repairing the damage done to the city in the recent attacks. Water was now the big concern, with the tower out of commission. Some people had started stockpiling water when the grid went down, b
ut others still didn’t seem to get the message. Those who had at least filled their bathtubs and every container they had would be fine for a few days, but after that things would go bad fast. There was an effort by city employees to get word out about basic sources of water that everyone could use, like the water stored in their water heaters. They distributed pamphlets with instructions on how to drain your water heater. Jake hated the thought of leaving the bunker at a time like this, but the thought of the kids out there on their own bothered him even more.
Dawson’s old pickup ran fine now that Jake had disabled or found workarounds for the digitally controlled engine components. Jake knew well the location the agents had texted him. It was a small deserted farmhouse that used to belong to one of the original settler families. The land was now a small part of corporate controlled farming. The original family sold out during the Great Depression in the ’30s. The farmhouse would have been knocked down long ago, if not for the debate between the local historic preservation society and the corporate landlords. It sat on a very small lot of farmable land. The preservation society was in the midst of trying to raise funds to restore it. So, it just sat.
Dawson leaned forward, pointing down the road. “There’s a van in front of that old house. Is that them?”
Jake worried about how much he had said to Maggie. The agents had him under strict orders not to tell anyone what he knew. Maggie could be trusted. Jake knew that, he just wasn’t sure he could convince the agents of the same thing. Dawson was another story. How much of the story could he be trusted with? How much of the story could he handle? The agents would have to understand that Dawson would figure things out. They’d rescued his kids, and they were now meeting them in the middle of nowhere for a secret hand-off. How could Jake not tell Dawson anything? “This is the location they gave me,” Jake said. “There wouldn’t be anyone else out here.”
“Who exactly are these guys?” Dawson asked.
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