Bug Out! Part 7: Mile High Motorhomes (3 page)

“Good,” Jasmine said, giggling.

“Oh, you want some alone time, don’t you?” Hilda asked, grinning.

“Jerry and I are trying to make a baby,” she replied. “It’s a good time.”

“Ah, I get it,” Hilda said. “You sure you want to do that, with the way things are?”

“I know, seems stupid, right?” Jasmine said.

“I think there’s something in us that ramps up that instinct during times like this,” Jane said. “I’ve even had thoughts about it myself. Thank God I’m not able anymore.”

“Well, now that you mention it, those kind of thoughts have crept into my mind too,” Hilda said. “I just chalked it up to being a newlywed, but maybe it’s more than that.”

“Here they come,” Jane said. “Mum’s the word.” The three of them were giggling as the men carried in the TV.

“Uh oh, what are you three up to?” Frank asked, looking at them.

“Oh, nothing to concern yourself about,” Jane said.

“How about that short table over there?” Jerry said, pointing to a table down the wall that held a vase. “Hey, Gabe!”

Gabe walked over with Dobie.

“What’d you need, Jerry?” he asked.

“Mind if we slide that table down here so we can put the monitor on it?”

“No problem,” Gabe said, looking at the TV. “You guys going to hook the surveillance system up to that?”

“Yeah, Jeb had it in his rig, in storage,” Frank said. “It’ll make it easy to keep an eye on things.”

“So it will,” Gabe said. “Thanks, Jeb.”

“No problem,” Jeb said, smiling. “It was just taking up room in my storage compartment. I took it out of the bedroom. I never watch TV in there, and needed the space for a cabinet.”

Frank got the cable routed to the back of the camera system’s DVR module. He plugged the other end into the TV, while Jerry plugged the power cord in. Jeb fished the remote out of his pocket and turned on it on.

“There we go,” Frank said, as the TV showed the multi-camera view. “I can set it to show eight cameras instead of six. I think this monitor is big enough.”

“I’d leave it like this,” Jerry said. “It cycles pretty quickly, and we can see this clearly from across the room.”

“Okay, I’ll leave it alone,” Frank said. He shut the cabinet doors. Jeb put the remote up on top of the cabinet.

“Ain’t that purty,” Gabe said, laughing.

“I thought this system broke down,” Dobie said.

“It did. Frank fixed it for me,” he replied.

“Nice,” Dobie said. “What was wrong with it?”

“Squirrels,” Frank said, “they chewed through the wires coming out the wall. Easy fix.”

“Excellent,” Dobie said. “I’ve got some acoustic gear in my truck. Maybe we ought to add that too.”

“Really?” Frank asked. “What do you have that for?”

“Jake talked me into it, to listen for the dogs, and general noises while out on patrol jobs. He thinks it’s even better to have than cameras.”

“Well, he’s got a point, for nighttime especially,” Jerry said.

“Dinner ready!” shouted Rosie from the kitchen area.

“I’d better go help,” Hilda said. She walked over to the kitchen, joining Rosie and Mary.

“Me too,” Jeb said. He walked quickly over to join the women.

Charlie, Kurt, the Sheriff, and the Deputy walked over and admired the TV screen. Earl and Jackson noticed the TV screen and followed them over.

“Looks pretty damn good,” Charlie said. “I’m surprised how well it picks up. Not much light out there now.”

“I think we did a good job cleaning those lenses out by the creek,” Earl said. “Look at that. Great picture.”

“With the dogs, and the moat, and this system, we shouldn’t have to sit up on that cold roof all the time,” Kurt said, smiling.

“We should get rigged up so we can get to the roofs in a hurry, though,” Jerry said. “From a protected angle, if possible.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to be caught with our pants down,” the Sheriff added.

“I’m hungry, Frank. Let’s go get into the food line.” Jane tugged at his sleeve.

“Okay, I’m hungry too,” Frank said. “Lead on.”

The rest of the folks followed them over, except for Gabe, who stood there watching the camera system cycle through, with a wide grin on his face.
Maybe we’ll be alright
, he thought to himself.

The line at the food table was already long by the time Frank and Jane got there. Rosie and Hilda were leaned against the wall next to the kitchen door, watching the crowd with amusement.

“I think they will like,” Rosie said.

“Hope so,” Hilda said. Charlie walked up to her and kissed her forehead.

“Looks like you girls did a nice job,” he said. “Hopefully Jeb didn’t get in the way too much.”

All of them laughed.

“Jeb get brownie points,” Rosie said. “I let him cash later.”

Jeb got an embarrassed look on his face as Rosie snuggled up against him.

Frank and Jane finally filled their plates, and walked over towards the back of the room, in sight of the new TV. Jerry and Jasmine joined them. The others trickled over.

“Hey, Gabe, going to get some food, or are you going to watch that TV all night?” Jerry asked, laughing.

“Oh, I guess I’ll eat. How is it?”

“Best venison I’ve ever had,” Jane said. “Top notch.”

“Sure is,” Frank said. He was almost finished with his meat. “Good side dishes too.”

“I’ve got all kinds of that stuff in the deep freeze.”

“Love the scalloped potatoes,” Jasmine said.

Gabe went over to get himself a plate.

“It feels so much more relaxed this afternoon,” Jane said. “Is it just me?”

“We’re getting pretty well set up here,” Jerry said. “Hopefully we aren’t just fooling ourselves.”

“Time will tell,” Frank said. “Shall I tell the girls our idea for working with the chips?”

“Sure,” Jerry said. “Why not.”

“Uh oh, what are you guys cooking up?” Jane asked.

“We were going to experiment earlier with exciting the chips using LTE from our cellphones,” Jerry said. “Then Frank realized that if we use our cell phones, we might bring on a transmission of the stub file through our phones and onto the internet. The enemy is probably set up to watch for that.”

“What’s a stub file?” Jane asked.

“It’s a file with an address that contains a very small amount of data…in this case it would be whatever information the enemy put on these chips, encrypted. If one of these gets out onto the internet, it will probably find its way out to the enemy.”

“That wouldn’t be good,” Jasmine said. “It would get them to the nearest cell tower. So what’s the idea?”

“Well, first we need to make sure that LTE is really the key to getting a transmission,” Frank said. “At this point, it’s just a very good educated guess that Jerry made this afternoon.”

“If LTE is the right frequency, then we need to be able to capture the transmission from the chip without it going out onto the net,” Jerry added.

Frank took a deep breath.

“You don’t want to tell us this part,” Jane said.

“It’s not that bad, really,” Frank said. “We want to take one of the motorhomes out, far enough into the boonies that we don’t have cell coverage. Then we can try our experiments without worrying that the file is going to slip out and give away our position.”

“You want to take one of our rigs out, un-protected, to an area where you don’t have cell coverage?” Jane asked. “I don’t like that idea one bit.”

“We wouldn’t be completely cut off,” Frank said. “We’d have the radios.”

“Do those have enough range?” Jasmine asked.

“They should, if we don’t end up with a bunch of hills between the park and here.”

“How long would you have to be out there?” Jane asked.

“Not that long,” Frank said. “Long enough to be able to capture the file output from all of the chips. Once I have those, I can start working on cracking their encryption. It may be enough to simply crack their addressing system. In any event, that’s where most of the work will be. Getting the output to trigger shouldn’t be too difficult. Making sense of the output is the hard part.”

“When do you two propose doing this?” Jane asked.

“Probably not for a few days,” Jerry said. “We need a signal generator.”

“Yes, a multi-function one, just in case it’s not really LTE that gets the transmission started.”

“That’s something you can get at that electronics store in town, correct?” Jasmine said.

“Yes,” Frank said, “if we’re lucky.”

“Which coach would you take?”

“Probably ours,” Jerry said, looking sideways at Jasmine. “We’ve got it set up to run the electronics already, and it’s got a powerful diesel generator.”

“We’ll be going too, you know,” Jane said. Jasmine shook her head in agreement.

“That’s OK with me,” Frank said. “In fact, I think we might want to bring a sharpshooter or two along, and at least one of the toads. For one thing, we’ll want somebody in a car to check out the terrain where we pull off. We don’t need to drive a motorhome into an area we can’t get out of.”

“True that,” Jerry said.

“Hey, look!” Frank said, pointing to the door. Dobie was walking in with several parabolic antennas and a bunch of wire. Gabe went over to meet him. Frank and Jerry got up and went over to check it out.

“There go our boys again,” Jane said, shaking her head.

“Yeah,” Jasmine said. “Sometimes being married to a geek gets a little old.”

The two giggled.

Wow, Dobie, these are cool,” Jerry said as they walked up.

“Yeah, I’ve had fun with these things. Probably don’t need all of them. I was thinking that for tonight, we just rig one up on the roof and run the wire down on the ground. We can put up something more permanent later.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gabe said. “How can I help?”

“I’ll stash these extras over there by the monitor,” Dobie said. “Then maybe you can show me how to get on the roof.”

“No problem,” Gabe said.

“Those have the amplifiers built in?” Frank asked.

“Yep,” Dobie said as they put the extra parabolic antennas over against the wall. “The cable isn’t much more than speaker wire, really.”

Gabe took Dobie out the door. Frank and Jerry rejoined their wives.

“Those are going to pick up noise from outside?” Jane asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Cool stuff.”

“What kind of range do they have?” Jasmine asked.

“Depends on how powerful the amplifier is,” Jerry said. “Could be as far as several blocks. Those have a pretty wide spread. I don’t see why we’d need more than one for the front of the park, unless we want to put them way forward. One of them ought to cover just about everything if we put it up on the sniper roof.”

“Want more food, honey?” Jane asked, looking at Frank.

“No, I had plenty,” he said. “I’ll get rid of the paper plates.” He picked all of them up and carried them over to the trash can by the kitchen door. He saw Dobie and Gabe come back in the front door.

“Frank, do you think this wire would go through the access hole over there, where the camera wires run through?” asked Dobie.

“Sure, should fit, but if we’re going to leave this up very long, we’d better tack them down. Squirrels are still around.”

“Understood,” he said. “I’m going back there now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Frank said. They went out the door, with Gabe following close behind, chewing on a big piece of venison that he picked up off the tray.

Dobie picked up the coil of wire that was on the ground, next to the ladder for the roof. He followed Frank to the far corner of the clubhouse, unwinding it as he went.

“This corner still gives me the creeps,” Frank said when they got there. “Especially in the dark.”

“Why?” Dobie asked.

“This is where the pajama boys got the drop on us,” he replied.

“I don’t like to think about that night,” Gabe said.

“There’s the hole,” Frank said, pointing. The ladder was still there. Frank climbed up and pulled out the plastic conduit piece that went through the wall, blocking the hole from the elements. “Hand it up.”

Dobie handed the wire to Frank, and he fed it through the hole, then put the conduit piece back on, and pushed it in place.

“Alright, that’ll do it,” Frank said. They all walked back into the clubhouse, and over to the area where the TV and Camera equipment was. The wire was hanging down about two feet. Frank pulled more of it through, enough to reach all the way to the TV.

“What are we going to hook it into?” Gabe asked. Frank looked over at Jerry.

“You got any audio connectors over there, Jerry?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah, in that little multi-drawer box on the table with my other stuff,” he said. He got up and walked over there, opened a drawer, and pulled one out. “Going to need the soldering iron…I’ll get it warming up.”

Jerry got to work, and had the connector on the wire in no time. He picked it up and carried it to the TV, plugging it into the back. Suddenly there was a loud hissing noise.

“We’d better turn that down,” Frank said. He reached up for the TV remote on top of the cabinet, and turned the volume down to where you could just hear the hissing. They all sat down, watching and listening.

“This is the peeper’s delight, I’ll bet,” Gabe said, with a dirty snicker.

“Damn straight,” Dobie said. “Old Jake told me some stories he heard from his customers.”

Suddenly there was some noise. Cracking twigs.

“Hey, something’s coming,” Gabe said.

“Look, there’s a bunch of deer!” Jerry said, pointing at the camera image. The noise got louder…cracking and breaking twigs. Footsteps.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gabe said, laughing. “Hey, we just ate one of your friends. You’re next!”

Everybody cracked up. The camera cycled to the next bank of cameras, and then was back to the front set. The deer bolted, startled by something.

“Whoa, something spooked them,” Jerry said.

Frank suddenly felt nervous, and looked over at his Winchester, leaning against the back wall.

“What’s that?” Gabe asked.

There were several dark shapes in the camera, growing larger, breaking twigs. A larger shadow followed.

“Are those what I think they are?”
Jane asked, looking at the screen.