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

by Craven III, Boyd

  “We should stop—” Dante started to say.

  “No, let her do this,” Leah said. “If the other one jumps in at this point, we’ll end it. Hard.”

  Anna now had Jennifer right where she wanted to. All the exercising she’d done to keep her core muscles in shape, all of her flexibility training, holding crazy poses for her modeling, all came in handy. Anna lifted her legs up and wrapped her ankles around Jennifer’s head. Suddenly Jennifer was holding onto Anna’s ankles as Anna reversed the direction.

  “Get off me bitch, or I’m going to break your neck.” Anna’s voice came out in a low growl. Jennifer looked panicked, and tried to stand up suddenly.

  The motion had her falling down backwards, and Anna’s grip was lost. She was faster though, and had reversed roles. She was now on Jennifer’s chest, raining down blows. Two solid hits to the chin and her eyes rolled up. She gave her two more punches, one for each eye, before rolling off to the side.

  Only to be tackled by Steff. Steff tried the same tactic as her sister. She straightened up to try to start punching the daylights out of Anna, and she never saw Leah move. The physician hit her with a knee to the side of the head. Steff fell sideways, dazed. Anna took a couple of breaths, then got to her feet slowly, brushing herself off.

  “I had that,” Anna told her.

  “I know, but to borrow part of Angel’s phrase… I wanted in on some stomping of monkey ass. Or however she says it.”

  The girls looked at each other and then giggled, and hugged hard.

  “That was pretty badass,” Steven called over to Anna. “Steff would have fell just like you did to Jennifer.”

  “That was amusing. Don, you want to call her off now?”

  “She won’t listen to me,” Don said.

  “Do you want to try?” Dante pushed.

  Steff was getting back to her feet, this time with both fists up like she wanted to box.

  “Steff, knock it off,” he called half-heartedly.

  She gave him a glance, then squared off against the two ladies. “You guys are so fucked.”

  Dante looked at Steven and Don, exasperated. Steven shrugged, then looked at his hands full of gear and guns. Dante sighed and walked up behind Steff. He grabbed her by the back of the hair and dragged her backwards.

  “What?” Steff yelled, then started hitting and scratching at Dante.

  “I really didn’t want to have to do this,” he said, forcing her head to turn towards Leah, who already had a sucker punch wound up. She let fly.

  Steff dropped, and Don made a motion towards the two of them. Steven dropped the extra gear and raised his carbine.

  “That’s my wife,” he said, getting on all fours and crawling to her.

  “I’ll check her, you cover,” Leah said.

  Dante nodded.

  “She’s out cold. Breathing is good. Probably going to have a concussion after, uh…”

  Dante was nodding. “She wouldn’t stop fighting.”

  “And if I can’t keep you to protect your hands, I’ll be the one knocking the bitch out.” Her voice came out sounding as wound up as they all felt.

  “I got you,” Don said, pulling her into his lap with his good arm.

  “Get over there with them,” Anna said, kicking Jennifer in the side.

  The woman’s eyes fluttered a moment, then she groaned and rolled to her side.

  “I said get over there with them,” Anna shouted, and this time, the boot was literally applied to the ass.

  Twenty-Five

  The fake social media page had gotten reposted to many of the counter protesting groups. They had taken it to be serious, and from what Curt and Andrea could tell, the Antifa they had intended to blame for this started reposting the call to shut down the detention center that the Cheeto Jesus himself had okayed to keep the good left-wing protestors locked up in.

  In other words, those on the left wanted to protest and free their comrades who had been snatched up at protests and riots by people in unmarked black vans. The right wanted to protest those who continuously rioted, looted and burned to exact their political revenge. They also wanted to see the end of the detainment. They didn’t feel it was legal with no due process, and considering the constitutional rights that were being trampled on… The groups actually had that in common.

  The page and subsequent posts for the rally even made the early afternoon news, which made everybody tense up.

  “You sure?” the trucker asked.

  “Yes ma’am. Then you and I can spend some time together,” Rob lied.

  The night before, he’d listened to Curt and Andrea’s plan and had to admit, it was good. If they pulled off the fake protest and let things get out of hand, he had the perfect cover to get in and out. His first order of business was to get into the facility. It wasn’t a maximum-security prison or top-secret military installation, so he’d improvised. That’s how he’d met Lucy at the closest watering hole.

  Her truck had been idling in the parking lot while the trucker worked on getting herself hammered. Rob was five or six years younger than her, but she’d lived a hard life on the road. She was flattered that a younger and handsome man the size of a small mountain had taken notice of her. It had been a while since a guy was buying her shots and dancing with her late into the night. She thought the handsome man was trying to get her drunk so he’d have an easier time later, but she would have gone for him sober.

  Now?

  Her head hurt, and Rob was coming out of the bathroom the next morning, just having taken a shower. She didn’t remember whether or not she’d gotten lucky the night before. She wasn’t sore like she had, but maybe both of them had underestimated the power of Cuervo. Rob had planned on trying to hide in the back of the truck, but when he’d seen the semi driver in the bar, he’d had second thoughts. It’d be easier to be driven directly in rather than worry about the unloading process. Leaving there, he’d make it up as he went. He was good at that, plus he’d been ducking his shots and had scored the spare bed in the motel room. Angel wouldn’t approve, but he’d kept to his vows entirely.

  “Listen, wouldn’t it be easier if I just picked you up from here after my appointment?” Lucy asked, nervous.

  She was one of the very few over the road truckers who went into the camp. Most loads were split up by various alphabet agencies, and day cab drivers would drop and hook empty trailers and keep the flow going. Lucy had milk and cheese, things that weren’t made locally. She had been able to keep her sleeper cab by doing the run between the dairy farms up north and this drop near where she lived.

  “I have to check out by 11,” Rob told her. “Can’t I just hide in the back of the sleeper cab while we’re there? I could like, you know, get things ready for later?”

  Lucy knew she shouldn’t, but the camp personnel had only once checked inside her truck, and it had been on her first trip in. Nowadays, they knew her by sight and just waved her in, after making sure the seal on the back door was still intact.

  “I guess…”

  “We gotta get out of here,” Angel said to her roommates.

  “I don’t know, I can hear people out there starting to get rowdy,” the mousy haired roomy said. “I’m watching the crowd grow on TV. It’s going to be an all-out shit show.”

  “She’s right,” Bailey said, the bruiser also known as Scorpia. “There might not be a better time to sneak out.”

  “You two can go then,” their other roommate snapped. “I can’t risk it.”

  “That’s because you’re partial to the new guy you’ve been cleaning for…”

  Bailey made a come on motion to Angel, and Angel slid off the bed and into the hallway of the dorms.

  “If we really do this, do you think those bitches will tattle us out?” she asked Angel.

  “Even if they do, does it matter? They’re going to figure out who escaped eventually. If what happens is what I think is going to happen, the chaos will keep them busy for days, if not weeks.”


  “That’s true,” Bailey told her quietly. “Do you have a plan?”

  “I do, but I want to know something… when we get out, and we for sure are, where are you going to go?”

  “With you, as long as you want me along?” Bailey said. “I got nowhere else to be.”

  “Ok, then let’s go get some lunch and I’ll fill you in on the plan once we leave the dorm. I think we should do it like, right now, or soon. Do you need anything from the room?”

  “No, but without wheels…”

  “Don’t forget,” Angelica told her, gently nudging her big friend towards the front door, “we won’t be able to call for help either, unless we get a cell phone from somewhere, and these prison jammies will give us away.”

  “Yeah,” Bailey said quietly. “So, we’re winging this?”

  “Not exactly,” Angelica said, then started whispering her plan to her new friend.

  A look of concern was slowly being replaced by a big grin. She started nodding along in agreement, especially when the plan got to her part.

  “Oh yeah, we can do that. I won’t have any problems with the guards… oh shit, is that the governor? I thought he was dead!” Bailey had been watching the crowd and had seen a familiar face.

  “Change of plans,” Angelica said with a grin.

  Twenty-Six

  Dr. Khamenei had followed the farm's progress with recorded drone footage. At thousands of feet in the air and the best camera technology ever invented, he could tell at a glance how much they’d done. He had a technician watching it during the daylight hours so he could oversee other projects, but this one was the reason why he was called in. They wanted to recruit guys like Rob, bad. Couple that with the fact that he’d be removing a very loud and vocal thorn in the government's side, he hoped he would have enough clout to retire with his mistress somewhere tropical, with half the money the government knew about.

  The rest was in numbered Swiss and Cayman accounts that didn’t have any names attached to them. Guys like him usually didn’t get to just retire. He had to earn that, otherwise his only way out of the game was feet first. Even at his age, they still needed him, and it felt good to mix it up once in a while. That young hellion wife of Rob’s had been good. Her training had surprised him.

  He’d seen Kenpo before, but it was more flash than bang. In that first fight, she’d mixed that up with Krav Maga and soon he’d had to actually think to stay ahead of the little woman’s fists and feet. Those were skills that’d laid dormant in him for years. She was good, but he was better. She’d almost surprised him, which would have made up for any lack of anything on her part. In the end, he’d surprised her, and now he was using her as bait to solve a few problems at once.

  “Did they finish the harvest?” Khamenei asked the technician that was waiting in his half converted fifth wheel trailer.

  “It looks like it. We’ve also noted which cars have been coming and going. We’ve seen them loading the help up with food and greens every day.”

  “So, we know where to go to collect their ill-gotten gains,” Khamenei said, rubbing his chin.

  “Well, if you want to call it that. I mean, it’s looking like 2 bags of grain per person, per day, plus a basket of food. You’d think they’d pay better than that.”

  “You know what the cost of corn and soybean would be if the markets were open right now?” Khamenei asked.

  “Well, can’t be that much. Horse feed used to cost us eight bucks a bag, but—”

  “Inflation has pushed one of those bags of grain into the hundreds of dollars worth. The folks they are paying in food are savvy, they can stretch that for months. Maybe even a year, depending on the size of their family. Remember, each of them have been working there for a week, and get two bags a day, plus other things.”

  The man fell silent for a long moment. “So, they’re committing felonies by hoarding all that food they don’t immediately need,” he said softly.

  “Exactly, but once we get that farm under wraps and out of the public eye, we can wrap up that assignment, and finish our operations in that area. I’ve gotten word from up high that they want all forms of dissent squashed, which is what we’re doing. So yes, each of those folks who went to work at the farm, went for nothing, knowing they would probably have their supplies confiscated anyway.”

  “Those selfish pricks,” the technician mumbled. “Don’t they know it’s for the greater good?”

  “If they don’t, they soon will. I need to get a hold of Rob to make sure they’re ready for us to roll in.”

  “Sir,” another technician said, “we’ve got the administrator on the horn, he says we need to see what’s going on at the gate.”

  “What’s going on at the gate?” Khamenei asked.

  “It’s looking like a riot. There’s one semi that made it in, but they had to use rubber bullets and teargas to make enough of a path for the truck to get through. They’re unloading it now, it’s the week's milk run.”

  “So, what the fuck does he want me on the horn for? I don’t run this shit show.”

  “I think he wants backup…?”

  Khamenei sighed and went to the radio, already hating the day. The call to Rob would have to wait.

  Curt and Andrea had gotten a phone call that morning that had them scrambling. Lucian, their lawyer from West Memphis, had been made power of attorney in order to sell their house, and he’d called and said there was a cash offer on the table. The problem was, they wanted to close, and fast. In between everything going on right that very moment, they’d said yes, sell it, but they needed two weeks to clean the rest of their stuff out and if the buyer didn’t like it, they could go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. Lucian had chuckled, knowing the settlement money from the city had made them wealthy once it was deposited.

  “Let’s just go stage out that way in case Rob and Angelica need to get out of there fast,” Curt suggested.

  “I still have to do my last day at the hospital,” Andrea told him. “I thought we were going to maintain our alibi?”

  Curt sighed. “I guess you’re right. We’ll hear from Rob once he’s out of there.”

  “Yes, stick with the plan. He’ll slip out in the middle of the chaos one way or another. Then he’ll be in contact.”

  “Listen asshole, do you want to stay here or not?” Bailey asked the governor.

  “If I suddenly show up in DC, they kill my family,” he said simply.

  “Free ride to almost Oklahoma,” Angelica said. “Then when you know they’re safe, you can blow the whistle on this place and other places like it. Seriously, I don’t think our president knows what’s going on here.”

  “Yeah, it’s a damn election year, or was for most folks,” he said. “You’re right. I want to get out of here. My family is in Oklahoma, west of Fort Smith, at a friend's place on the Rez.”

  “We’re going most of the way that way eventually,” Angelica told her. “We’re headed to a little farm south of Booneville.”

  “Booneville?” Governor Christian said, his eyes widening. “Have you ever heard of the Langtry farm?”

  “Oh, that’s us,” Angel said, and did a mock curtsey. The governor almost fainted.

  The guards who were stationed at the doors that split the cafeteria were nervous. They were all that separated the outside world of the warehouse to the safe environment and all of their charges. Prisoners. Detainees. With the chaos outside starting to get folks inside worked up, they were thinking two people were not going to be enough to make a difference if the folks inside rioted as well. Every available hand was at the gates or fences, trying to keep the horde out, and the folks within from rioting too.

  Two women, one very large, one very small, were making their way towards them. The man they were leading had his hands behind him. Bailey led the way to the door, and the two guards stepped in front of it.

  “Nobody goes past here, you know that,” Clint told her.

  “Clint, you know who this is?” Scorpia
asked.

  The second guard pushed the man’s chin up, then grinned. His partner caught his eye and nodded; he’d recognized him as well.

  “I do. Why do you have the former governor?” he asked, knowing the big lady sometimes played bruiser for the higher ups, doing work they couldn’t be seen doing. Something about it being too inciting to have actual brownshirts do their own dirty work.

  “He was riling folks up inside. I was asked to, er… reinforce what a bad idea that is, especially with what’s going on outside. I was hoping with the chaos, I could use the alternate break room like I did a few weeks back?”

  Clint was about to say no, but his partner nudged him. “Who asked you to do the deed?” he asked.

  “We can’t say, but it was the same as last time. Plausible deniability and shit, plus I want some new sheets and bras. These itty-bitty things you guys give us itch and never fit right.”

  “Plausible deniability. Yeah, ok. I’m watching from the window as you take him in there though. We have so much crazy shit going on, if you pull something funny, I come in shooting first, asking questions next. Savvy?”

  “Sure thing, Captain Jack! Angelica said, her voice small and squeaky compared to the large woman’s.

  “I… what are you going for?”

  “I’m going to kneecap him when she’s done. My big sis worked in his office, and I heard all the horrible things he did—”

  “Go,” Clint said, grinning. He knew the big woman would work over the governor good. She’d been an asset since they’d captured her in the big riot that had left a few people dead from some doctor shooting them. She hadn’t been the one to throw the brick, he’d heard, but she was with the group who had.

  Goldie, Luis, and Harry had the metal detector, and were frantically trying to find the last ammo can. At least that’s what they expected it to be. The other four spots on the map had been ammo cans. After the police taking the Owens daughters and Don away, they had to decide on what to do. They were going to press charges, since asking them to stay away hadn’t been unreasonable and given the circumstances and how they’d attacked…