The day after: An apocalyptic morning (118 page)

              "We were able to get the entire inventory of the gun store up here before it was washed away," Pat said.

              The sigh of relief from the Garden Hill side of the table was clearly audible.

              "You have .30 caliber rounds?" Skip asked. "We have more .30 caliber rifles than anything else and we're down to less than three hundred rounds."

              Another look was exchanged among the El Dorado Hills group, this one followed by a mutual shrug. "In for a penny, in for a pound I guess," Pat finally said. He stood up. "Why don't we go take a little tour of the armory and then we'll work from there?"

              "Oh my God," Skip said excitedly as he saw just what kind of firepower El Dorado Hills was in possession of. Like in Garden Hills, all of the weapons and ammo that were not being used or had not been issued to a person were stored in one place, in this case one of the larger classrooms of the elementary school. Shelves had been scavenged from other parts of the school and installed in geometric rows from wall to wall in this room. These shelves were all filled to near capacity with firearms of many different types and boxes upon boxes of ammunition. "I had no idea a gun store carried so much inventory."

              "They had quite a storeroom in the back," Pat said, leading him around the room. "Some of the stuff back there was not exactly legal."

              "No?" Skip asked.

              "No," Pat confirmed. "The owner of the store was one of those militia types and I think he had a few things from his personal collection in there. We found a few fully automatic Uzi's, a fully automatic Mac-10, ten military issue M-16s, six fully automatic AK-47s, and nearly forty different illegal assault weapons of varying type."

              "It's a Goddamn motherload," Paul, trailing a little in the rear, commented. "What happened to the owner?"

              "Apparently he was standing outside of the shop on the street when the earthquake hit," Pat explained. "He must've been trying to get clear of the building while the shaking was going on. While he was doing that an electrical pole snapped and fell down at the end of the block and the wire hit him. He died of electrocution probably only a minute or two before the power went out for good."

              "That's too bad," Jack said without much emotion.

              "Maybe," Pat replied with a shrug. "Or maybe it was just as well for the rest of us. Bob was someone that probably would've made a bid for town leadership back in the organization phase. I could easily envision him allying with our politician friend and maybe turning this place into something like Auburn. I'm also quite certain that he wouldn't have just quietly let us come and raid his store."

              "Probably not," Skip allowed, looking at a shelf full of ammunition. The entire shelf, which ran from one end of the room to the other, was filled with boxes of .30 caliber rounds. There had to at least five hundred of them.

              "As you can see," Pat said, watching Skip lovingly caress the boxes, "we're very heavy on the various varieties of .30 caliber. Bob's store was a major stopping point for hunters heading up into the hills and we were right smack in the middle of hunting season. At last count we had around twenty-six thousand rounds of it. Of course not all of that is from the store alone. Just like you, we scavenged the empty houses in town and took all the weapons and ammo from them as well."

              "What about 5.65 millimeter?" Skip asked.

              "We're not as well set in that department," Pat told him. "We only have about twelve thousand rounds of that."

              "Is that all?" Skip asked with humorous sarcasm.

              Pat laughed. "I guess that is quite a bit, isn't it? I'm sure we can spare some of it for you in the interests of food exchange."

              "What are these red boxes?" asked Jack, who was at the end of the shelf that held the 5.65 ammo. He was holding up one of a group of fifty or so boxes that was colored differently from the others. "It's not a different brand or size, it's just a different color."

              Skip and Pat both walked over to him and looked at what he was holding. "Tracer rounds," Pat said. "Bob had a pretty good supply of those as you can see."

              "Tracer rounds?" Jack asked.

              "No shit?" Skip said, taking the box from him. He looked it over and confirmed that that was what they were. "They're treated with red phosphorus so they'll glow red when you fire them."

              "Cool," Jack said, impressed.

              "All the better for home defense, right?" Pat cracked.

              "How many boxes of those do you have?" Skip asked, an idea he'd had earlier reoccurring to him with this new discovery.

              "About sixty," Pat said. "We haven't found much of a use for them here as far as defense goes, although they are useful for training purposes."

              "Three thousand rounds of tracers," Skip said contemplatively, his idea taking on a larger form in his head. "Very intriguing."

              "I've seen enough," Paul said. "Why don't we go start negotiations?"

              "Why don't we?" Pat agreed.

              They left the room, with Pat locking it carefully behind them, and headed back to the conference room. Once there they resumed their previous seats and began bartering. It was perhaps the fastest diplomatic agreement in modern history.

              "Look," Paul said, "we're not much into haggling here. We need what you have and you need what we have. I promise to be fair if you will."

              "That's the only way to do it," Pat said, getting nods of agreement from Renee and Bonnie.

              "Good," Paul said. He turned to Skip. "You saw what they have and you know what we need. Why don't we get that figure out on the table first?"

              "Okay," Skip said, looking across the table. "If we're to have a prayer in hell of driving these Auburn assholes back, we're going to need at least seven thousand rounds of .30 caliber and five thousand rounds of 5.65. Why don't we start with that?"

              The three El Dorado Hills negotiators all whistled softly as they heard this. "That's quite a bit," Pat said a little doubtfully.

              "And four hundred people with guns are quite a bit as well," Skip replied. "Like Paul said, we're being fair here. That is honestly what I think it'll take to put up any kind of defense that could be rated above hopeless."

              "We could absorb that," Renee said.

              "I suppose," Pat reluctantly allowed. "What else?"

              "That's the meat of our needs," Skip told them. "If you agreed to nothing else, I think we could get by with that alone. However, there are a few other things that would make my job a little easier."

              "Such as?"

              "We could use another four automatic weapons, either the M-16s or the AK-47s, or a mixture of both. And speaking of AK-47s, we have a few of those in our inventory as well. We could use about two thousand rounds of ammo for them."

              "Anything else?" Pat asked.

              "Those tracer rounds," Skip said. "All that you can spare. All of them if that's possible."

              "The tracer rounds?" Paul asked. "What do you want those for?"

              "A little idea I'm having," Skip said, and he refused to say anymore about it at that point.

              "Okay," Pat, who had been making notes, said. "Let me go over this real quick just to make sure I have it right. You want seven thousand rounds of .30 caliber shells, five thousand rounds of 5.65 millimeter, two thousand rounds of 7.62 millimeter, four automatic weapons, and three thousand rounds of 5.65 millimeter tracer rounds. Is that correct?"

              "That is correct," Skip confirmed. "And again, that is what I believe to be a fair assessment of our needs versus your supply."

              "I think the first thing we should decide, Pat," Renee said, "is whether or not we can spare that much of our armory. What do you think?"

              "We could spare it," he said immediately. "It will create a significant dent in our holdings, that is true, but we'll still have enough to fight an Auburn-sized force if we had to." Or a Garden Hill sized force with aerial assault capabilities, he did not say, but which was clearly on his mind.

              "All right," Bonnie said. "We can spare that amount. That's decided. So now comes the good part. What are you offering in return for this?"

              Paul handled that part of the negotiation. "We'll deliver to you two tons of rice, two tons of wheat, and six thousand cans each of spinach, chicken noodle soup, and Dennison's chili. We'll be willing to throw in some baby food and some peanut butter as well when we get around to making the recovery of those items."

              A quick discussion ensued among the El Dorado Hills team. They whispered back and forth and looked at Pat's notes. Finally Pat said: "Those amounts are acceptable. How would delivery work?"

              "We'll give you half of the grain right away and all of the canned food except the chili. After delivery of the weapons and ammo, we'll deliver the rest of the grain. The baby food, the chili, and the peanut butter, we'll do when we get around to it. Sorry, I can't give an exact date on that one - recovering those supplies are not one of our priorities at the moment."

              "I understand," Pat said, looking at his companions. "Any questions?"

              "How will you get the grain to us?" Renee asked.

              "We'll take it directly from the same train cars that we took it from," Skip said. "It'll be an all day operation, maybe a two-day operation. You'll need to strip enough water heaters out of abandoned houses to transport and store it all."

              "Water heaters?"

              "You're not using them for anything else, are you?" Paul asked. "They hold five hundred pounds apiece and they're easy to fill and rig with ropes. You need to cut the tops open and put hinges and clasps on them. Once you get eight of them ready for us, we'll do the deed."

              "And we would certainly," Skip added, not bothering to consult his leader on this, "be open to further trade of our food stocks for some of your fish and especially some of your lobster and crabs."

              "Assuming, of course," Paul said, "that we're still around to do that."

              The El Dorado Hills team excused themselves for a minute and left the room so they could discuss the deal in private. They returned five minutes later, their expressions neutral.

              "It looks like you folks have yourselves a deal," Pat said, holding out his hand.

              "Okay," Paul said on the flight back to Garden Hill, "we have the ammunition we need, or at least we will. Now what? We still have the slight problem of fighting off four hundred men."

              "One obstacle at a time," Skip said. "The ammunition was a big one - maybe the biggest one. Now that we don't have a shortage to worry about, I think I can come up with something."

              "What are you going to come up with?" Paul demanded. "You told everyone yourself that we can't fight off that many people hitting us from three different directions. Has that changed in some way that I'm not aware of?"

              "No," Skip said. "We can't fight off that many people at one time. That still holds true."

              Paul gave a grunt of frustration. "What am I missing here, Skip? You're telling me that we'll be slaughtered but you're implying that you have some sort of plan. Please clarify."

              "I said that we can't fight off that many people at once," Skip explained. "So what we'll have to do is make sure that there isn't that many people when they get to us."

              "What?" Paul and Jack said together.

              "We have a helicopter," Skip reminded them, just in case they had forgot. "And they have a ten to fourteen day march to make before they get into fighting range. We know what their intentions are towards us, don't we? So why should we wait patiently for them to come to us?"

              Paul looked at him carefully. "What are you saying?"

              "I'm saying that we need to harass them every step of their march. We need to fly squads out to do hit and run missions on them from the very day that they leave Auburn."

              "Hit and run missions?" Paul asked.

              "We fly a four-person squad out and drop them along their avenue of advance. The squad rakes them with fire and then withdraws to the helicopter before they can be engaged at close range. We fly a little further down the line and do it again. We do that three or four times a day, every day, at random intervals, and I think we'll have a very detrimental effect on them."

              "Are you saying that four people will be able to significantly reduce their numbers?" Paul asked. "I find that very hard to believe. I mean, what's the best that we can hope for? That they'll take out ten or twelve people at a time at first."