Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 3 | The Farm

by Craven III, Boyd

  The man looked happy that his question hadn’t been a foolish one. Another hand shot up.

  “Yes, sugar?” Anna asked him.

  “Um, not to be um… rude… but how are we getting paid?”

  Curt walked in front of the group. “We’ve talked about this, and we’re willing to tailor it to each individual. For now, we can do this one of three ways: cash, at an hourly wage of $15, or food, or fuel. We could also do a combination of all three, though unless you brought fuel cans today, we can only pay out in cash or food.”

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I could really use the food and fuel more than money.” The man who had said it was a tall, thin guy who looked like he had missed a few meals.

  “If you have a fuel tank—”

  “I drove,” he said, interrupting Dante.

  “Perfect,” Steven told them. “Now we’re figuring fuel prices are going to be higher than normal to match what we have to pay when we buy more to restock our tanks—”

  “I heard a rumor that they’ve slashed fuel shipments,” another man said, “so are you going to be paying fuel at the same rates as we see at the stores?”

  “More or less,” Dante answered for him. “Although our food prices are going to be very good. If you take the food only option, you’ll have the choice of two bags of what we’re packing today as well as a basket of fresh produce from our greenhouses. I hear we have a ton of salad mixes and cucumbers, and although the tomatoes aren’t ripe yet, I heard you can put them on the windowsill.”

  “My grandma always did that with late season tomatoes,” one of the men called. “I think I’ll take the food only option. You’re offering like a hundred and forty pounds of grain and a basket worth of veggies as payment for today, do I have that right?”

  “Absolutely,” Rob told him. “Now, either myself or Dante will be driving and unloading the corn or soybeans. The ladies have practiced the plan, and can direct you from here. Give me five minutes and I’ll dump the first load out and we can all get to work. Any more questions?”

  There were none. Rob had elected to let Dante run the harvesters today and he would switch out tomorrow, so he was less visible. He had an idea that he would be leaving any day now. One part of his plan that he hadn’t nailed down was what to do if he got the…

  His phone rang. Not his personal phone, but the one the men who had taken Angelica had left for him. He hopped in the dump truck and fired it up the same moment he answered.

  “What do you want, you son of a bitch,” the words came out in a growl.

  “I’m glad to see you folks getting our harvest in. It looks like quite the party there.”

  Rob looked up in the skies, but he couldn’t see anything. With a sigh, he backed the truck up. He was watching his mirrors and Leah and Anna’s directions until they made the motion for him to dump his load. He let the hydraulics do the work.

  “Yeah, we had to bring in outside help,” Rob said putting it on speaker phone. “I’m dropping one load right now. The help is going to fill feed bags and stack them on pallets.”

  “Good, all that much easier for us to ship out. How is the security angle looking? When can we expect to move in on the farm?”

  “You said you wanted to get the harvest in first. That is like another week and a half. I’m doing my part, you better fucking do yours.”

  “Oh, I am,” the man on the other side of the phone said. “I counted fourteen or fifteen extra helpers who walked in from your cute medical center. Is that right?”

  “Fifteen, and you know it,” Rob told him. “How high up is the drone?”

  “High enough that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.” The man was lying, but Rob couldn’t see it.

  “Nobody gets hurt here. That’s what—”

  “You don’t get to stipulate terms to us,” the voice on the phone snapped back.

  “I know, otherwise you’ll kill my wife. I want to talk to her. Now.”

  “That’s actually not possible at the moment.”

  “If this is some kind of trick—”

  “No, no trick. Your wife severely injured two of her four escorts who brought her to us. For her safety and our own, it’s just not possible. She’s too damned good at what she does. Was that your training and influence?”

  “The hand to hand? No, she’s been practicing martial arts and Krav Maga since she was in middle school.”

  “I’m extremely surprised the company never ran across her. With her looks and talents, we could have used a woman like her. Just like we used a man of your talents for other things. Pity, but if you don’t play ball, or she goes off the rails again…” He let the words hang and Rob almost shivered.

  Leah knocked on the driver’s side door and gave him a quizzical look. It startled him. He saw his load had been dumped on a new tarp that was laid out in the middle. Lowering the hydraulics, he waved and then waited to pull forward when he knew he would clear the door. Once clear, he drove out into the fields where Dante was just firing up the harvester.

  “You know if anything happens to her, I’m going to burn down the country trying to find you.”

  “Or die trying. No, we’d like to keep our end of the deal up. We have a further proposal for you once this short round of unpleasantness is over. When should I be expecting your call?”

  “I told you when the harvest is up. Like you wanted.”

  “Good boy, you remembered, even though you look like you’re ready to strangle me the way you’re mangling that steering wheel.”

  Rob took a deep breath and then pulled up next to the harvester. Dante fired it up and, when it was up to speed, they both started moving forward, harvesting a new row.

  “Once I get my wife back, who knows. I would do anything to keep my family safe.”

  “Good, good. Then we shall be seeing you shortly. We’ll plan on hearing from you the following Friday after market, and expect me to give you a call somewhere in the middle.”

  “Fine,” Rob said, not happy.

  “Bye.”

  Dr. Khamenei hung up the phone on his end, then pulled the back off the phone. After removing the battery, he smashed the sim card, then stomped on the phone. The battery he tossed in his garbage. He had Rob’s number memorized. If he tried to call early, one of the NSA geeks would alert him and he’d simply use a new burner. The operation wasn’t fully vetted, but Khamenei knew the alphabet boys never played by the rules.

  Look what had happened with the President: a suggestion of Russia, some FBI guys nudged here and there, and folks in all the agencies trying to trip up the game show personality that the people had elected president. It’d thrown the plan off by years. His changes threw their plans off even more. He’d had the audacity to fire heads of agencies who had done their time and had been waiting to play their role in the plan.

  Khamenei had been read into the plan, as had others in various agencies. It wasn’t just a USA plan, it was one that would have been finalized right after the TPP and other more secret agreements had been signed. Instead? Chaos. Khamenei knew the virus had been released on purpose, because he’d been inoculated against it a year ago, as were all active agents in on it. He did think it was funny they called it the Wuhan Flu, when he knew for a fact it started in San Francisco, California.

  “Do you think he bought it?” Sharrod, one of the camp’s agents, asked him.

  “The part about his wife? I think so. He filled in some blanks for me, and passed the test question about her background.”

  “Good. That guy sort of scares me,” Sharrod admitted.

  “Why?” Khamenei asked him.

  “I pulled his dossier. He’s got an uncanny ability to come and go at will, disappearing in plain sight. He did that sneak on us at the gate… A guy that big that can do that and his background…”

  “What about his background? He was a special forces operator, was he?”

  “No, he just always had a habit of getting into trouble and, despite odds, pulling
off the impossible. His psych evals showed he was a borderline sociopath or narcissist. If you were his buddy, he loved you. If you weren’t somebody he loved, he’d give two shits about putting a bullet in your ass. With what we’ve done, I don’t think he's going to be joining our drum circle and singing ’Kumbaya’.”

  “That’s why I gave him the information that the company may be interested in further employing him. He’s good at what he does. With his infiltration skills and long-range shooting, he could make a fine addition to the team the new District 10 administrator is putting together.”

  “I thought that was just you dangling a carrot.”

  “Not at all.” Khamenei chuckled. “Not at all.”

  The crew left hot, sticky, and itchy. They had unloaded and shoveled grain, filled feed sacks, stapled them shut, and stacked them on pallets until nearly supper time. Goldie had been running pitchers of lemonade out about every fifteen minutes since lunch. Now, she was running out the doctored lemonade made with the last of Dewey’s moonshine. The men were very appreciative of it.

  When they had run out of pallets, they had used a dolly to move the heavy bags near the back of the room and had started making stacks there. It was slow going because all the bulk had to be filled and bagged by hand. Everybody found a rhythm and when they left, they were slightly tipsy from the 120-proof mixed with the electrolytes and their bounty. In the end, everyone had taken a share of food, with two of them asking to get a few gallons of gas for their vehicles.

  Most of the vehicles looked like they were going to be dragging, but they made it off the farm without the suspension dying on them.

  “Now the real fun starts,” Anna told them. “How much do we want to hide right off the bat?”

  “All of it,” Rob said. “They had a drone overhead today, or maybe one of the men was a plant, because I got a phone call from him.”

  “The man who took Angelica?” Leah asked.

  “Yeah, just as I got in the truck earlier. He thinks I’m still on board. Seemed excited that we’re palletizing all of this up for them.”

  “If there is a plant in the workers—” Anna started to say.

  “I don’t think so though. I think it was a drone. He mentioned how hard I was gripping the steering wheel. I was though, I was imagining my hands around his throat…” he made a snapping closed motion with his big hands, and everything popped.

  “Is she ok?” Leah asked him.

  “The guy said that she badly injured two of the four men who were transporting her. It was too much of a risk. I would rather have heard her on the phone but…”

  “That sounds just like her. She’d monkey stomp their bitch asses and skull fuck them if she didn’t have to worry about killing them,” Anna said with a wry grin. “To steal her phrase.”

  “After this, that isn’t even a line I’m going to worry about crossing. Not anymore. When we get my wife back, I am thinking about declaring open season.”

  “If you make a big enough stink in Kelso,” Curt spoke up after being quiet for most of the conversation, “do you think the president will take notice and step in?”

  “No, I don’t,” Rob told him honestly. “The democrats are talking about a massive mail in election. He’s fighting the changes the whole way, but he has to sue each individual state. From what I see on the news, he’s been busy fighting off naysayers, dealing with quack doctors - no offense - and trying to keep the economy from crashing. Riots and looting are almost a daily occurrence everywhere, and I’ve even seen on the news that in Portland, there are daily attacks on their FEMA camp.”

  “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeittttttttttttttttt.” Anna mumbled.

  “Let’s just dump the pallets downstairs for tonight, then we can fill the hand carts with the loose bags,” Steven said suddenly.

  “That sounds good to me. Are you good to drive one of the trucks tomorrow?” Rob asked.

  “Leaving already?” Andrea asked him.

  “Yeah, I think tomorrow would be good. It’ll give me time to scope them out in Kelso before I make my move.”

  “We can be ready to leave in the morning,” Curt told him. “Andrea and I are ready, and she even had the hospital send her a travel letter.”

  “That is going to be extremely helpful,” Rob said with a grin. “Anna and I have the new toys sighted in. I hope I won’t need to use them. If I can slip in and out undetected, so much the better. That’s off though if I can figure out who the team was who snatched her.”

  “Good, you still want to stop by that storage locker on the way out of town?”

  Rob just chuckled. Nobody joined in. The big man wasn’t laughing the laugh of a jolly person.

  Sixteen

  Angelica’s head hurt. She opened her eyes slowly, looking right to left. She had been strapped down to a bed by the wrists and ankles. An IV went into one arm. Other than the sore head, the only other unpleasantness was the fullness of her bladder. Her wrists seemed to be lightly chafed from what felt like the restraints, but that was it.

  “Good, you’re awake.” A matronly black woman in nurse’s scrubs said. “I’m Coraline.”

  Angelica tried to ask her what was going on, but her mouth was dry.

  “I’ll give you some ice chips and a sip of water. I’ll even take all the restraints off of you. But I need a promise. Please don’t hurt me. The guys who brought you in say you almost killed one of them and hurt two more. I just work here, and not even by my choice. Are you going to hurt me?”

  Angelica shook her head slowly. The nurse was holding a clipboard and she could tell she wasn’t armed. She had almost killed someone? The one she’d popped in the throat? She knew that one guy probably had a busted hand, maybe worse. Her thoughts stilled as she tried to relax as Coraline undid the straps and pulled the IV line out. She didn’t want to alarm the woman, so she remained calm and relaxed.

  Once both wrists were loosened, the nurse turned to a counter a few feet away and grabbed a Styrofoam cup and handed it to Angelica. Angelica sat up slowly and sipped. The ice had melted some, leaving a small amount of water on the bottom. It wasn’t long until she was upending the cup trying to get it all out. It wasn’t until she had a piece of ice fall out around her face and bounce down her gown that she realized that she’d been changed.

  She cleared her throat a couple of times, then picked out an ice cube and tucked it into her cheek. “Thank you,” she said, her voice raspy as the nurse took the restraints off her legs. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “I thought you might,” Coraline said, and held her hands out.

  Angel took them cautiously, but the woman didn’t try anything. Angelica found herself to be slightly weak and wobbly on her feet. The nurse led her to a closed door and opened it for her.

  “I’ll give you your privacy, but holler if you need help or fall.”

  “Ok, thank you.”

  When Angelica finished, she found the nurse checking off something on her chart. Angelica made her way over to her.

  “Remember sugar, you promised,” Coraline said, barely looking at her.

  “I don’t have any reason to hurt you,” Angelica said. “What is this place?”

  “You’re in the medical wing of District 10’s Kelso Confinement Center.”

  “It’s seriously called that?”

  “Yes, unfortunately,” the kindly nurse told her.

  “That’s the most fucked up shit I’ve ever heard. Why are you here?” her voice still rasped, so she got some more ice out of the cup.

  “I was voluntold.” The woman laughed as she said it. “Lots of people working around here like that. They come in and tell you where you’re going. If you don’t want to go, they make sure you go.”

  “What did they do to make you go?” Angelica couldn’t help but ask.

  “One day at work, I get a phone call from my neighbor who’d been watching my son, Caleb. Child Services was there with a court order to pick him up. It seems that my refusal to cooperate and get the va
ccine they’d pushed through quickly made me an unfit mother. I wasn’t necessarily against it, I just wasn’t ready. It went through so fast. It was so new, I needed time to do some research, and make an informed decision for myself. .”

  “They took your kid?” Angelica asked.

  “Yes,” Coraline said. Angelica could see a flash of anger in the woman’s eyes. “So, I made a deal with the devil, and here I am. My son Caleb and I now have our own room in the Confinement Center, with our own bathroom. I hate that I had to do it but—”

  “What about your husband?” Angelica asked.

  “The streets took him from us years ago,” the nurse told her shortly. “Now, do you want food first, or a shower?”

  At the word food, Angelica’s stomach growled. “How long was I out?” she asked.

  “A few days. They kept you sedated until they could figure out what to do with you.”

  “I thought they shot me,” she said, suddenly remembering the pain in her neck. Her hand went to the spot, and she found a raised bump with a small scab there.

  “The old guy had some sort of pneumatic tranquilizer gun he used on you. When they brought you in, you were a bloody mess. I thought somebody shanked you in the neck.”

  “And you’ve been taking care of me?” Angelica asked.

  “Mostly. Other nurses could, but I wanted to make sure you were left alone by the guys, and woke up without any more trauma.”

  “Is… are you talking about rape?” Angelica asked.

  “What you did… You took on the team that snatched you. They weren’t just some buffoons, that was one of the district's special teams. One of the barrack’s buildings has windows that face the parking area. They saw…”

  “I remember a guard running out from one yelling to shoot me before any more get any ideas.”

  “Well Hun, they got ideas,” Coraline said, then went to a phone on the wall.