Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 43
“Looks like a trailer was here,” Matty stated the obvious.
“Yep. Makes me wonder if this was some sort of payback from whoever they stole the trailer from,” Charlie wondered as he squatted at the muddiest set of prints. “Lots of people walked through this.”
“Or maybe the attackers just decided it was victors’ spoils,” Matty counter offered.
“What’s this?” Charlie said, spying some plastic in the muck. He stuck his gloved fingers down and started to pull, but it was taking its time with a small suction. He eventually pulled out a polymer rifle magazine. He stood up and handed it to the junior deputy. “See if you can wipe that off in the grass while I clean my glove.”
Matty wandered back out into the field and made for a grassy spot. He spent a few seconds trying to wipe the magazine clean and eventually stood up. “PEW?” he said, reading it. He flipped it over and was able to eventually make out the other side. “Anddd…the number 17,” he finished. Charlie had finished wiping off his glove and came over to take a look. He knew immediately what this piece of evidence meant, but he didn’t say anything. Matty finally broke the silence. “Want to go clear the house?”
Charlie just stared at the magazine, silently. Finally, he said, “Sure. But we won’t find any survivors.”
10
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…”
—Robert Burns
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 6 Days.
Cedar Falls Road, Earl thought. The home stretch. Though they had a good fifteen to eighteen miles still to travel, he was starting to feel pretty good about the trek. Everyone was wet, cold, and tired. Now they were contending with real slopes, too. The gradual elevation increase had given way to no-kidding hiking trails on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains. I don’t miss this part of rucking, Earl thought, reflecting on his Army days. Fort Stewart had some hills, but not slopes like these.
They weren’t actually on the road for a good portion of this leg but a forestry access road that roughly paralleled it. Earl knew the four-legged threats would avoid them, and the two-legged threats would be easy to spot. They had to get onto the actual road for the last push around Rattlesnake Lake and through the towns of Riverbend and North Bend before they made their way to the cabin.
Earl, Tori, and Conner had been engaged in a planning meeting, discussing things like meals, getting the neighbors organized into a defensive group, and the state of Seattle when Earl noticed his daughter had quietly started to increase the gap between herself and the nerd-herd. She was at the farthest reaches of yelling to get her attention. Earl was pulling the cart—it was Conner’s turn to ride the bike. “Piper!” Earl yelled as she rounded a curve and kept going.
Without a word or hint, his old partner took off. I’d forgotten how much you can communicate with just a look when you’ve trained thousands of hours with someone, Earl thought. He looked down at the rifle cases in the cart and suddenly realized they had probably entered the period of time where they needed to start wearing the rifles slung. He watched Conner slow down and start hugging the shoulder on the right side, which was the inside of the curve. He was probably two hundred meters ahead. The road was fairly rural, with household driveways every quarter mile or so.
Suddenly Conner took off at full speed and completely disappeared around the bend. “Get off your bike!” Earl ordered his son. Owen knew by the tone not to argue. “Get into the bushes right here!” he told Victoria. “You guys stay put until you hear from one of us!” He looked at the nearest landmark, which was a mailbox stand. He unzipped his rifle case and slung it on his front, pulling the adjustable strap tight to keep it from interfering with peddling. He jumped on Owen’s bike, taking off as fast as his tired legs would peddle.
Pop-Pop! Pop-Pop-Pop Pop! the gunshots screamed. Dammit! Hold on, Princess! I’m coming!
“Big Mac!” Legion hollered out in glee. “Great to see you, brother!” he yelled as he bear-hugged his just-arrived Kent Chapter President. The exhausted, chubby biker, his wife, and their two kids had strolled in on foot. He didn’t say much at first, but the relief on his face was obvious. Legion moved on to Ronnie and the kids, giving them all hugs as a welcome.
Big Mac was average in size and a bit portly. His road-name was a play on his real name—Sam Burger—more than a reference to size. He dropped a heavy looking pack off his back—they all did. His face was both grimacing from the toll and relieved to be rid of the weight on his back. “Glad to finally be here,” he mumbled. It was rainy, but Legion could see the man was sweating heavily once he started to pull his high-dollar biker’s raingear off.
Weasel and Shorty had started to help scoop the Burger family’s gear off the floor. The hang-arounds and prospects were all on various assignments, primarily working the perimeter and guarding the radio operator in the attic. Shorty was the Kent Chapter’s V.P. “Glad to see you, bro! What took you guys so long?”
Big Mac was already looking for a low-ball glass behind the clubhouse bar—three fingers of Crown Royal was called for…a couple of times. “Ronnie and I were on the way to Sammamish to visit her mom for the day when this lil’ quagmire started with the first quake.” He took a long pull on the glass, nearly draining it in the first drink. He nodded to his wife to move the kids to wherever Weasel was dragging their gear. Once the kids were out of range, he continued. “It’s hittin’ the fan out there,” he said with a look of concern.
“Depends on how you look at it,” Legion said. “But go on. Where’s your bike?”
“In a ravine somewhere along 900. We figured it wasn’t rainin’ too bad, and we wanted to get a ride in. After that first quake, you’d have thought we went home. ‘Might as well keep going’ we thought. ‘Aftershocks won’t be too bad.’ Quake flipped us like we were on a carnival ride. We both got banged up real good. Took through the night to get home, which turned out to be demolished. Luckily one of the kids’ friends took them home from school with ‘em.” He had everyone’s undivided attention, so he finished his tale. “So…we dug our camping gear out of the rubble and rested for a couple of days. Then walked here.” He looked around. “Surprised she’s still standin’, honestly…”
“That’s cuz I built her strong when I remodeled a dozen years ago,” Legion said. “Why do you all think I’ve been pushing the prepper paranoia all these years?” he asked the whole room. “Brothers, it ain’t the end of the world. It’s the beginning! Everyone get in here for a shot!” The few members in the room at that moment strolled over and complied.
“We do need to bring you up to speed on some things,” Legion told Big Mac.
“Like what?” he asked, with a look of concern.
“Like the fact that I called for a meeting with the brothers, the Russians, and the rest. Seems that some of our supporting networks”—he was referring to the informal array of people he used to distribute and sell the meth they cooked— “have been gettin’ hit. We can’t allow that. Rather than start a big war, I called for a meet to see if we can come to terms for real estate.”
“And?” Big Mac asked.
“The Mexicans didn’t show up.”
“I still say we wax those turds!” Shorty exclaimed. This elicited a general sense of agreement from around the room.
“Me, too,” agreed Weasel, who’d returned from showing Ronnie and the kids where they could rest. “Need to send a message.” The consensus was starting to build.
“Due time, brothers…due time,” Legion placated. “But, first things first. Everyone knows we’re the crank dealers. Everyone knows the Russians got the AKs. And everyone is figurin’ out that the coke and heroine will stop rollin’ in soon.”
“Natalie? I think you’d better come look at this!” Roy called out from the barn. While not a dairy farm, they did have their own small herd, like a lot of farmers. They weren’t dairy cows—they used them for grass control in the pastures that were taken off-line after being used for commercial grass several years in a row. They were also a source of meat for the family.
Natalie was in the house’s side yard retrieving every usable apple she could from their three trees. She heard Roy call and plowed her way through the ash. When she got to the barn, she removed the N95 paper dust-mask she took from the hospital on her very last trip there three days earlier.
“What’s goin’ on?” she asked her husband with a slight concern. “Why aren’t you wearing your mask?” she immediately said upon seeing him. “Your asthma!”
“Stop,” he said calmly ignoring her. He pointed to the third stall down on the left.
Natalie saw one of the cows laying on the ground, hyperventilating. “Ooooohhh, nooo,” she said sadly. “I was afraid of this! I figured it would be dehydration, but the ash must be killing them!”
“That’s what I figured, too.”
“It could actually be a combo of both,” Natalie surmised. “We just aren’t going to be able to keep them watered and there’s definitely nothing we can do about the air. They stir it up when they walk!”
“I’m going to take the Cadet and go visit some of the others,” Roy said. “I think releasing them to fend for themselves is the best option.”
Or just putting them down, Natalie thought. “Okay. Drive carefully. And wear your mask!” she commanded.
“A couple of dudes found an outboard motor and small john-boat in the maintenance shed down by the main pier,” Georgie Coryell told Sticky. Georgie had proven himself to be his closest ally, one of the men the Risen Dead had paid for. The fellow serial rapist had been a resident of the island for seven years.
The two men had just enjoyed a session with their new, involuntary partner, Dr. Gomez. They were in one of the residential structures on the island, the former home of the recently tortured and deceased chief of security.
“We need to get down there, then, before everyone wants to take off,” Sticky said.
“You want them all to stay?” Georgie asked, confused.
“Naw…I don’t give two licks if any of these perverts live another second. But they’ll take off and we’ll be at the mercy of Mother Nature to find another boat. No. We send out smart men—men we trust, and they bring us back an actual boat.”
“Got it,” Georgie agreed. “You think O’Reilly and Kilgore?”
“Naw, I trust them too much. We all need to watch each other’s backs for a while, ya know?” Sticky answered. “How ‘bout Brady, Watson, and White?”
“Sure.”
“I also want to check out that large garden on the southwest corner of the island.”
“Except it’s fall, right? We ain’t growin’ squat…”
“Plans, my friend…” Sticky thought. I gotta lot of bikers to feed next year. “Always plannin’.”
As they made it to the front door, Georgie asked, “What about her?” They’d left her handcuffed to a radiator in the old house. A motivated person could easily escape if noise weren’t a factor.
“Where the hell’s she goin’?” Sticky said with a laugh. “It’s an island!”
11
Mission Statements.
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 20 Days.
“Twelve!” Slaughter County Commissioner Sean Fox asked incredulously. Charlie had just been brought into the Unified Command’s mid-afternoon meeting at the sheriff’s insistence. The Sheriff knew he would be peppered with questions, and he wanted the lead investigator to be there to answer them. He had just given the report on the number of dead at the latest shootout. They had pockets of violence every night throughout the county, but this was the first time the death toll from one incident had broached ten bodies.
“And you said they were all men?” the Bartlett Police Chief, Brandi Farrly, asked.
“Mostly, Chief,” Charlie answered. “There were two women. That makes us think they were probably engaged in the actual fight—that the attackers were not shooting everyone, just those with weapons.”
Looking at the rest of the command council, she stated the obvious. “That just validates the stories of the women and children brought in this morning.”
“Walk us through the scene with these photos you took, Sergeant,” Commissioner Fox said. As long as the command council had gas station fuel tanks to commandeer fuel from, they would be able to enjoy big screens in their meetings.
“Well, sir, these pictures of the house show a number of bullet holes, mostly coming from the inside-out.” This drew a number of puzzled looks as Charlie kept going. “These cannisters were some sort of homemade smoke device. The attackers obviously have some tactical experience.” The slides kept going. “This scorched spot in the back yard near the bodies was some sort of sparkler bomb.”
“Bomb?” Sandy interrupted.
“Not for fragmentation, Director,” Charlie explained. “Very similar to the flash-bangs we use to enter a building.”
“How’d it get onto the middle of the property?” she asked.
“Not sure,” Charlie said directly before continuing. “Once we did our initial walk-through, we pulled the Guard unit in and had some of them help us process the evidence.” If that’s what we’re still calling it. Charlie thought. It’s not like we’re still trying cases… “We found a total of 179 cases. Most of them in the .223/5.56 caliber. Blood patterns seem to support a theory that the majority of the deceased were shot as they had just gotten off of the floor or a bed. That tells us this was well-coordinated and a lot of people attacked at the same time.” He paused to see which photo he was on. “We think between three and five of the deceased died in the nearby shop.”
“You mean victims,” Sandy corrected.
“Director?” Charlie said quizzically.
“You said deceased. They’re victims, Sergeant. Right? They were attacked in their own home?”
“Perhaps I should’ve mentioned the large pile of drugs that had been set on fire in the backyard, ma’am,” Charlie said. “And the piles of stolen clothes and jewelry. These people were one of the county’s most well-known meth-syndicates.”
Sandy decided to let it go. “Go on,” she directed.
“These photos show some makeshift huts that the Matthews household was probably using as some sort of guard shack. We found 22-caliber casings near those. I’m guessing they used a suppressor to take out the guards first.” This drew mostly grimaces as well as a few audible gasps. In addition to the large body of politicians, police, fire, and Guard personnel on the command council, there were also a number of aides at the meeting.
“Sounds like professional mercenaries to me,” Sandy observed, really ramping up her fake Southern drawl. “This was no doubt about one group of thugs trying to steal from another.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Sheriff Raymond said.
“I concur,” Chief Farrly said. “It was a lopsided victory, for sure, but the fact that the women and children were spared may support a different conclusion about motive.” This caused a few small conversations to buzz on both the council and the audience.
“Order!” Commissioner Fox said, trying to rein-in the noise. He looked at Charlie. “Anything else, Sergeant?”
“Uhh, yes. There was a picture of a rifle magazine. It had some stuff inscribed on it. That’s a lead I’d like to follow.” How much do I tell them? Charlie was hiding it, but he was stressed…torn between supporting his oath as a peace officer and trying to keep Phil out of trouble. I need to get ahead of them on this.
“What was on it, Sergeant?” Sandy asked. “Some sort of racist propaganda, no doubt.”
“No, ma’am, it had a number and the word ‘pew’,” Charlie half-lied. “Many people who train in firearms etch some sort of markings”—he chose not to say initials—"on their magazines so they know whose are whose when they’re all on the ground.”
That triggered Sandy’s full attention. “Where?” she asked, being mis-directional on purpose.
“Where…what, ma’am?” Charlie asked confused.
Sheriff Raymond knew where this was going. “I think the director wants to know where do you want to follow the lead, Sergeant?”
Crap! I walked right into that! Charlie was kicking himself inside his head. I hate bureaucrats. “There’s a firearms training facility in West Slaughter that might be able to help me identify what ‘pew’ means,” Charlie said, trying to recover. “They’re a valuable asset.”
“Or the perpetrators,” Sandy said, squinting her eyes at Charlie. “Very well. Conduct your investigation, Sergeant. Thank you for your service and this great report.” She looked directly at the sheriff. “Sheriff, I think the council could benefit from every detail you can scrounge up on this firearms training facility.”
Josh saw Payton and Savannah giving Maya Jorgenson and her mom hugs near the horses. He decided now was as good of a moment as any to go see how phase one of the common project was coming along. Pam Jorgenson owned the three horses the range had started using for various tasks. Not only were they helping with hauling logs and plowing, but they were grazing down grass in the future garden area, which saved on fuel. They were helping haul things like firewood wherever it needed to go. Payton was giving the ladies the grand plan when Josh walked up.
“Hey, everyone,” Josh said, politely interrupting.
All four smiled at him when he approached, but Payton’s and Savannah’s smile had a little extra something in them. “Hi,” Payton said. “Josh, have you met Pam and Maya yet? We go way back.”
“Don’t think so,” he said, extending his hand. “You were Crane’s friend, right?” Moron, he thought, seeing the sadness appear on her face in an instant. “Sorry. I’m not that bright sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“We can’t pretend he didn’t exist, right?” Maya said. Pam looked at her daughter with an empathetic eye.
