Bug Out! Part 7: Mile High Motorhomes (14 page)

“Got it.” The mortar fired in fairly rapid succession. The third one caused a secondary explosion.

“Good, got their shells,” Dobie said. “Hear that, Charlie?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to get off the phone now and take the dog down there to look. Hold your fire.”

“Alright, Dobie. The Sheriff and I are going to go down there on foot too.”

“Good.”

“What do you want me to do?” Gabe asked.

“Drive the SUV back to the front of the park,” he said.

“Okay.”

The men climbed down. Duchess ran over to Dobie, tail wagging.

“You know how to fire one of these?” Dobie asked, picking up the dead man’s AK-47.

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Don’t you want it for down there?”

“Naw, I’m better with the pistols.”

“Okay,” Gabe said, taking the weapon and getting into the car. “Be careful.”

“You too. Let me take a look down the road before you get out there.” He trotted up to the intersection and looked down. Fire smoldered, but there was no movement. “Okay, Gabe, go ahead, but drive by there fast, just in case.”

“Righto,” Gabe said. He fired up the SUV and drove out. He made it in front of the park in no time, and drove across the bridge just as Charlie and the Sheriff were getting ready to walk across. He parked beside his residence, out of sight.

Dobie was already at the shoulder of the road, and he looked down. There was a small fire going below, but it didn’t look hot enough to turn into a forest fire. There were bodies all over the place, and broken equipment, too. Mortars, ammo cases, other stuff. He was about to climb down when he saw the Sheriff and Charlie coming. He went over to join them.

“Anybody still kicking?” the Sheriff asked.

“Not that I can see, but who knows how many might have fled further down that mountain.”

Well, we can guestimate how many there were. Two sedans. Maybe five in each. Pickup truck…probably six. So we’re talking about sixteen men. How many bodies?”

“Didn’t get a good count yet. There’s one guy back on the road into the canyon. I wasted him with my pistol when he tried to run away from the mortar rounds. There was one guy trying to escape from this car here. He got hit with the Willie Pete and burned up. Not a pretty sight.”

“Anybody in those first two cars?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“I guess we get to go down there, then,” the Sheriff said. “I’ll be able to see tracks if some of them skedaddled.”

“This makes me nervous,” Charlie said. “Some of them might be hiding in the trees, waiting to take some shots at us.”

“We should get some warning from Duchess.”

“Maybe you should go get the other three,” Charlie said.

“That’s a good idea,” Dobie said. He trotted down the road until he could see the front of the park, and then called Princess. She came running over. “Simon and Peabody,” he shouted. They came running over too. The three dogs greeted Duchess, and then they followed Dobie back over to the shoulder next to the burned sedan. The Sheriff and Charlie were already down the hill.

“Look at this,” the Sheriff said. “Four of these idiots got hit when the pickup and the other car rolled down the side of the hill.”

“Dead?” Dobie asked.

“One was still barely alive, but I put him out of his misery,” the Sheriff said.

“I didn’t hear a shot.”

“Used my knife. Why waste ammo? He was pinned under the wreckage.”

“We can account for thirteen,” Charlie said. I count eleven dead down here, plus the one on the road and the one you shot.”

“That’s not enough bodies,” Dobie said.

“Probably not,” the Sheriff said. “Unless the cars weren’t full. Let’s go down the hill a ways and look for tracks. Keep those dogs close. Stay out of the open as much as possible.”

The men picked their way down, looking warily in all directions, as the dogs searched, noses to the ground, looking up every few seconds and sniffing the air.

“Look, tracks right there,” Charlie whispered, pointing. “Two men.”

Suddenly a bullet whizzed by, striking a tree behind them, sending splinters flying. The dogs took off running towards the direction of the bullets, barking like crazy. The Sheriff and Charlie had their rifles aimed from behind trees, scanning with their scopes, in the direction the dogs were running.

“There’s one,” the Sheriff said. He fired, and a man fell from the tree. Over to the right, another man jumped out of the tree, threw his gun away, and started running. Charlie shot him in the back. He fell to the ground. Dobie looked over at Charlie, surprised.

“What, Dobie, you think we take prisoners?” he said. “Not a chance.”

“Okay, I get it,” Dobie said.

“I’ll go see if there are any more tracks,” the Sheriff said. Dobie followed him, watching the dogs as they looked around. They scoured the area for about twenty minutes. Charlie had gone back up and was removing the chips from the bodies.

“I don’t think there were any more,” the Sheriff said. “No tracks anywhere, and your dogs would have noticed something. Let’s go back up.”

Dobie nodded. The Sheriff stopped at the bodies down by the tree and cut the chips out of them.

“There’s another body back on the canyon road. We’d better get the chip out of that one too,” Dobie said. “What about the bodies?”

“They’re far enough away for the smell not to bother us,” the Sheriff said. “I say we take their guns and ammo and anything else of value, and leave them here for the bears and the boar.”

It took another ten minutes or so to gather everything up. It was too much to carry. Dobie called Gabe and asked him to bring the pickup truck out. Then he and Jeb walked up the canyon road and took care of the last body. After they got the chip out they each took a foot, dragged him over the side of the shoulder, and rolled him down by the other bodies.

“Well, what’s the haul?” Gabe asked after he parked.

“Not bad,” Charlie said. “Thirteen more AK-47s in usable condition, some ammo, and a few hand guns. We blew up all the mortar rounds, I’m afraid, and the mortars they brought are toast.”

The men tossed everything into the back of the pickup and drove back over the bridge. Jackson pulled it away from the moat, and then drove the backhoe to the barn.

“It’s Miller Time,” the Sheriff said, walking into the clubhouse. Rosie looked over at him and laughed. Charlie rushed over to Hilda and gave her a hug.

Jake walked up with Trish. “Man, is it like this all the time?” he asked. “Feels like we’ve gone out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“The heat’s on, that’s for sure,” the Sheriff said. Gabe and Dobie walked into the clubhouse.

“Thank God for those dogs of yours, Dobie,” Mary said.

“We were pretty damn lucky again,” Charlie said. “Too lucky. If it wasn’t for you guys coming down the road when you did, the cretins would’ve gotten those mortars set up.”

“If the dogs act like that, there’s going to be something up,” Dobie said. “Trust me. We won’t just be able to sit back here and let them come, though. We’re going to have to check things out. It’s too easy for them to lob shells in here at us.”

“I think we ought to be putting more cameras around,” Jake said. “I’ve got the stuff in my truck, like I was saying before. We ought to be putting them down the road apiece in each direction.”

“Yeah, I agree,” the Sheriff said. “Those guys knew where we were, and they were getting ready to make an assault. No way was this random.”

“Shoot, that reminds me,” Gabe said. “The chips. Hand ‘em over, guys.”

“Wait a minute,” Jake said. “Can’t we drop them somewhere advantageous to us?”

“Yeah, a kill zone,” the Sheriff said. “How about back there in the canyon. We ought to be able to trap a few of these folks if we’re smart about it.”

“You know, that’s a hell of an idea,” Dobie said. “But we should place them well. Scatter them all around that canyon area. ”

“Right,” Charlie said. “Let’s go do it now, before it’s all the way dark.”

“Yeah, I’ll fire up the SUV. Jackson, could you let us out again?”

“Sure,” he said.

Dobie went out and got Duchess again. Then he met Gabe, Charlie, and the Sheriff back at the SUV. They got in and watched as Jackson pushed the bridge back over the moat. Then they drove off towards the canyon.

Back in the Clubhouse, Hilda walked up to Mary. They both looked terrified.

“We aren’t going to survive here, are we?” Mary asked.

“No way,” Hilda said. “I’m going to make sure that our coach is ready to go.”

“Yeah, me too,” Mary said.

Trish was listening to them from a few tables over. She looked over at her dad, who was talking to Gabe. She wished that Terry and the others were back. She was trembling.

The generator on the coach purred along.
Jeb and Terry paced outside, looking around warily.

Inside, Frank had his hand on the signal generator, looking at Jerry.

“Go for it,” Jerry said.

“Yeah, honey, go ahead,” Jane said.

Frank turned on the signal generator, and then switched on the signal receiver.

“That doing it?” Jasmine asked.

“Looks like it…I’m getting more than one hit here. I’ve got to plug the signal generator into the laptop.” He connected the two devices with a USB cable, and brought up a program.

“What’s that?” Jane asked.

“A little program I cooked up to capture RF message payloads.”

“That mean there’s output?” Jerry asked, pointing to an indicator on the screen.

“Yep, sure does,” Frank said. He clicked on a button that said “Cap” on it, then selected a folder to store the file.

“Hey, Frank and Jerry!” Jeb shouted.

“Uh oh,” Jane said.

Frank opened the file using his notepad application. The file was 64 bits long, but was all gibberish.

“What’s that mean?” Jane asked.

“It’s encrypted, as I expected. This’ll be the hardest part to figure out.”

“Guys!”

“Let’s go see what they want,” Jerry said. Everybody left the coach.

“What’s going on?” Frank asked.

“Listen…mortar and small arms fire,” Jeb said.

It was silent for a moment, and then there were several muffled explosions.

“Oh no, that coming from the park?” Jasmine asked.

“It’s coming from that direction,” Terry said, “but it’s hard to tell if it’s a few miles or forty miles. A lot of hills around here.”

“I think it’s coming from the park,” Jeb said.

“Should we go back?” Jerry asked.

“Not yet,” Frank said. “We’ve got work to do. If our guys are going to lose, we’ll just get killed going back.”

“He’s right,” Jeb said. “You guys keep working.”

Terry looked sick with worry, but he had resignation on his face. “Yeah, keep working. Maybe we can sneak in at night.”

“It’ll be really late,” Frank said, “but we’ll see. I’ve got two steps to do. If I can get the first one done, that’s good enough for this trip.”

“What’re the steps?” Jerry asked.

“First, I need to be able to recognize that these are enemy messages, regardless of what they say under the encryption,” Frank said. “That’ll make the bad guys visible.”

“At what range?” Jeb asked.

“As long as we can get out on a cellular network attached to the internet, we can see where the chips are anywhere in the world.”

“That’ll help us to see anybody coming at us,” Terry said, grinning.

“Exactly. That’s why I want to get that part done before we leave here.”

“And the other part?” Jasmine asked.

“Crack the encryption. That should tell us who’s who.”

“Ah, so we really could use the message to find that asshole Saladin,” Jeb said.

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Frank said.

“Let’s get back to work,” Jerry said.

“Yeah, no sense telling us luddites about this now,” Jeb said, laughing. “Go work your magic. Terry and I’ll make sure we don’t get any un-invited guests.”

Frank nodded, and went back into the coach, followed by Jerry.

“You guys need something to drink?” Jasmine asked. “I’ve got lots of soda in the fridge.”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Terry said. “Diet cola would be good.”

Jeb nodded yes. Jasmine went into the coach, followed by Jane. She came back out with two sodas, handed them off, and then went back inside.

“What next?” Jerry asked.

“We pull out each of the chips, one at a time, and capture the payload. Then we figure out what we can use to ID them. You have any sharpies in here?”

“Yeah, just a sec,” Jerry said. He went into one of the cabinets above the couch and opened it, pulling out a shoe-box shaped plastic bin. He pulled the top off and grabbed a sharpie. “Here you go. Gonna mark the bags to match with the files?”

“Exactly,” Frank said. He marked the bag for the first chip with the name he gave to the payload file, and put that chip back into the lead box. He grabbed another, and closed the box. He set it on the table in front of him, saw the return on the signal receiver, and clicked the capture button.

“You don’t even have to take it out of the plastic bag?” Jane asked.

“Nope, no need,” he said, as he pulled up the file. “Look, same structure. This part’s going to be easy.”

“These will only get us as close as the nearest cell tower,” Jasmine said.

“That’s true,” Jerry said. “There’s got to be one really close to Gabe’s park, though, because we have killer LTE coverage there.”

Frank gave them a sly smile, as he continued to work.

“I think maybe I should make up a couple of mobile cell towers,” she said.

“You know how to do that?” Jerry asked.

“In theory, yes,” she said. “The hardest part would be getting the internet connection.”

“How about pairing it with satellite?” Jerry asked.

“That might work,” she said.

“How is Gabe getting his internet?” Jane asked. “I remember Frank talking about it being a fairly low bandwidth satellite connection.”

“He’s got cable TV,” Jerry said. “That means that there’s cable run all the way out there.”

“It’s probably run along with the electricity and phone lines, on the poles along the highway,” Jasmine said.