Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 74
“Like my son does now, I used to paramotor. I understand the thrust to weight and gravity issue just a bit.”
“Oh, so you get it, then,” Dexter said, completely missing any small clue John may have left there. “If you want to add any real volume of explosives to this thing, we have to limit it to just the electronics, servos, and a battery. No fuel or motors. No receiver for taking in control signals. We might be able to get twenty ounces per square foot of wing. That’s why it is also thick, not just long. We need to have a wing shape that really provides lift so it’ll glide a long way. Which leads me to ask…”
“Where are we launching from?” John guessed.
“That’s the million-dollar question…” Vince sighed.
“Exactly,” said Dexter. “If you try to smuggle this thing down to a skyscraper, it’s going to be difficult to hide—even if you leave it in pieces, which I don’t recommend. We’re going to need to augment these securing straps with some dowels and glue.”
I just knew you were going to say that, John thought pessimistically.
“I’m working on a plan,” he said as politely as he could muster. “Could this thing be towed?”
Dexter looked at the others. “Towing? A tow point would have to go right into the nose...”
“That ain’t gonna work,” Marshall said. “We need all four of these IR sensors up there.”
“Well, hold on…” Alex put in. “The dude in the video from India made a smaller model with all four sensors built right into the circuit card. That doesn’t mean we have to do it exactly the same.” Josh could see the young man’s eyes getting a glaze as he was thinking in his head. “They all need to be up front, but putting them in a grid design is really just easier on our minds to comprehend. As long as they’re all up front getting signal, the way we have them send data to the control surfaces is all in the programming, right?”
Marshall looked at the plane, but he was seeing math and a computer in his mind’s eye. “Yeah, I suppose….”
“It would take a little work to calibrate,” Alex continued to Marshall, still talking him into it. “But I think it would be doable.” He looked at Dexter. “Yes, I think we could mount these sensors around a tow point and make it work. But you’re still faced with the same questions with your tow vehicle.”
John gave Vince a nod, telling him it was time to go discuss stuff. Not really, he thought somewhat tensely. There’s only one right answer to that question.
He brought Vince up to speed on his idea as they headed to one of the fighting positions along the river. He knew Tucker was on watch.
“Hey,” his son said when his dad and Vince showed up unexpectedly. The two men slid down into the timber reinforced foxhole to get under the limb roof with his son. “What’s up?” He could tell by his dad’s face it was important, but not life threatening.
“Man, it gets kind of snug in here when two old geezers squeeze themselves in,” Vince joked.
“Yup,” said Tucker, who still had two more cold hours to sit there. “It does. So, what’s up?” he repeated with a slight annoyance.
His dad paused for a minute, hesitating and searching for the right words. Finally, John just blurted it out. “Where’s your paramotor?”
“Locked up in the canopy of my truck,” his son said. “That thing is my bread and butter.” As his love and expertise in the sport grew, so did his cost for having the best gear he could afford. The wing, motor, blade, reserve chute, floatation device, protective gear and other odds and ends represented close to fifteen-thousand dollars in goods. “Why?” he asked suspiciously, eye-balling the two old-timers who wore suspicious looks on their faces.
No. Freaking. Way! I think that’s him! Nick Williams was trying to pull the little photo that the man on Fox Island had printed for him that night. I can’t believe this worked!
He was looking at Stuart Schwartz in the flesh. Or at least he thought he was. He was digging through his right cargo pocket, feeling for the small sandwich baggie. I’ll give it to that little Fox Island group—they were blindly naïve about how close to death they were, but they were organized doing it…
Nick started to slide a little closer to the gap in the concrete barriers. At that moment he’d been taking a turn scanning the overall crowd, trying to teach this little security checkpoint about monitoring body language and other unspoken cues. He began to eavesdrop on the checkpoint as they processed the doctor. Now, how to tell this guy I know what he did without scaring him off…But Nick quickly realized that wasn’t his only problem. It became obvious as the doctor passed through the process that he was with one other—nope…looks like two—men. And even though the one looks like a fresh boot, they don’t look weak. Nick realized that was a good sign after thinking about it. The doctor’s will to live is strong, I’ll give him that… Nick still recalled the blood spray the doctor and his scalpel and bear trap had drawn out of the two bikers.
The trio started to move up the hill on their next leg, and Nick followed. They’d made it about a hundred meters when Nick heard “Williams!”
Don’t look back, Nick commanded himself. You have half an MRE back there. Just leave it.
“Williams!” Nick heard again. This time it was so loud that he saw the head of the tall guy next to Schwartz cock just a little bit. He also saw the man’s lower arms disappear to his front.
“Yo! Nick! Where you headed?”
Nick just kept walking. Another ninety seconds passed.
Suddenly Josh turned around, startling Stuart and Jeff. He had his AR-15 at a low-ready position, ready to flip the safety if he thought he needed to shoulder the rifle. “You got a problem, dude?” he asked with a serious tone.
Nick’s hands shot up to near his shoulders. His rifle was on his back. Even though he had a pistol on him, he had no intention of making the men he’d been waiting for nervous. “No. Actually…I’m here to help you solve a problem. Are you Schwartz?” he asked looking directly at Stu as he slowly kept walking to the stopped group. “Doctor Stuart Schwartz? From Los Angeles?”
Josh drew on Nick, flipping the safety off as he shouldered the weapon. “Stop!” he yelled.
Nick stopped immediately. “Whoaaaa…easssyyy….”
“Interlock those cookie grabbers, scumbag! Put ‘em on the back of your head!” Josh was all business. He scanned past his quarry and saw that the checkpoint had gone back to business and was completely ignorant of what was happening two hundred meters uphill. “You guys scan around to make sure we’re not being ambushed,” he commanded Jeff and Stu.
“You’re not being ambushed,” Nick said as calmly as he could. “Do me a solid and lower that.” He could see the wheels spinning behind Josh’s eyes. “Please? One Joe to another?”
Josh flipped the safety and very slowly lowered his rifle to a medium-ready position. “That obvious?” he asked un-amusedly.
“You got 11-Bravo written all over you,” Nick replied with the kind of respect that only vets understood when one met another.
Josh sighed a bit, and then looked behind him, and around, scanning. “Old habits,” he said. He had lowered the rifle back to full rest but kept his hands in their positions on it.
Stu had decided he’d watched the macho guys long enough. “Mind explaining how you know me?” he asked. “And keep in mind that I realize you could’ve gotten what you told us off that clipboard over there.”
“Trust me.” Nick said calmly as he lowered his hands. “I’ve been gambling a lot to find you. And your life depends on hearing what I have to say.”
“It’s getting too deep!” Jack yelled back to Natalie from about eighty feet ahead. His quad was spinning tires and digging itself down. They had tried laying branches in front of it, hoping that momentum would keep the vehicle on top of the packed ice. The fresh stuff was just falling too fast.
Natalie’s heavier, six-wheeled utility rig was sinking too much, too. “I think we need to find somewhere to camp!” she yelled up to him. “Until this blows over!”
Jack waved to signal he heard her. He hopped off the quad and hoisted the big backpack off the back-rack, donning it. He grabbed his shotgun and walked eastward up the trail towards the others. “I really don’t feel like going backwards,” he told them. “I’m going west to find a good spot to try and throw up some tarps.” It was his hope that as they decreased elevation, the snow would be more manageable or even non-existent.
The heavy plastic leaf-bag hanging off the back of Natalie’s vehicle flipped open on its right side. Grimacing from his homemade limb-and-poncho gurney, Conner told him, “Nothing extravagant. The snow will be falling off branches in volumes that can hurt. Throw something up between some heavy bushes that aren’t directly under branches, if you can find it.”
“Makes sense,” said the software engineer. “I’ll keep my travel down to ten minutes…Figure I’ll be back within…forty?” he quizzed Natalie.
“Sounds good.” Not that I have a watch, she thought as she watched Jack disappear around a small curve in the trail. She looked toward Conner, who was trying to reconfigure the leaf-bag as a snow cover with his good hand. I bet that shattered bone hurts like a SOB, she thought. “Stop fussing,” she scolded as she tried to do it.
Conner was in too much pain to argue. “Thank you. You should go get out of the wind until he gets back,” he suggested from under the plastic, mylar, and blankets. “And drink some water,” he suggested, echoing those medics in the Army that used to annoy him so much.
Natalie was still in physical pain from her variety of injuries, and she didn’t even dare try to think of her emotional mindset at that moment. Having Conner to look after had been an unfortunate blessing…a needed distraction. “You’re in shock. And I told you to quit fussing,” she said, with just a small hint of nurse’s charm, not flirtatious…more…motherly.
You’ve done plenty, she thought, almost choking up—the elation of being rescued was perpetually pushing itself to the front of her mind. Conner had ended the old man—the lead demon in her nightmares. And that was something she’d not soon forget.
14
Tough Breaks.
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 30 Days.
“It don’t matter what you do!” the tied up man told Earl defiantly. “They’re gonna track ya! It’s what they do! It’s what they been doin’ ever since Tank took over!”
“You’re awfully mouthy, considering you’re hanging over a ravine,” Earl said calmly. He was rummaging through the pack of a man he and Larry got the drop on. Just as he predicted—man, these third-world warlords all think the same, don’t they? Even the American ones—someone had followed them out of the small town. It’s hard to fathom that within a week of the fall of law and order, Conner and I had to kill three criminals, and within a month, a tourist town now has a warlord.
Only Earl and Larry weren’t a caravanning family. They had set up a simple ambush. Earl had been pleasantly surprised to find it was just one man. “Why’d they send just you?” he asked his prey, just an average looking man in his mid to late thirties.
“Not gonna tell you anything else! Just gonna wait ‘til they show up!”
“Heh!” Earl said, raising his eyebrows. They won’t get the chance. He looked at his partner. “You may not want to watch. Why don’t you go downhill a bit and keep an eye out?”
Larry nodded without word and disappeared. At first, they’d just tied the man’s hands up and made him sit in the snow. As Earl snooped through the tracker’s gear, he found a piece of rope and had an idea. After a few minutes, the two had managed to suspend their foe from a fir branch. He was over a small ravine, just a couple of feet out from Earl, where the ground sloped off steeply.
Earl looked down. “Won’t kill ya, what with the snow and brush, but daaaannnggg!” He looked up and smiled at the man. “It sure is gonna hurt like the dickens when you break both your legs!” Earl looked again. “On second thought, maybe it will kill ya…”
“You sick son-of-a-!” the man screamed. “Let me go!” he howled.
“You’re pretty thin,” Earl said. “I bet you could stand to be hanging from your arms like that for several minutes.” He was being calm and nonchalant about the whole thing. “Whereas that fatty down there guarding the food…”
“Let me down!” the man commanded.
“I need to know where to find Tank,” Earl said. “After that…maybe.”
“Tank would kill me! No way!”
Earl pulled a knife out of its scabbard on his hip. He looked over the edge as he spoke. “You see…that rope you brought isn’t true kern mantle. If it were, I could cut through like half of it and it would still hold you.” He looked up at the man. “They design it to keep climbers alive even if it gets worn out on a rock, you see…” He was calmly instructing the man as if it were a ropes and knots course. “But that cheap crap you got there?” Earl chuckled. “Lemme guess—Lowe’s? Home Depot? That’s just a three-eighths utility rope.” He put the blade to the rope where it angled down to the bottom of the tree.
“Wait!” the man yelled.
Earl stopped. “Go on,” he calmly commanded.
“Please!” The man was starting the bartering process all over again.
Earl put the edge back on the rope and pulled it toward him, nicking the outer fabric.
“Alright! Alright! Stop!” the man screamed. “The ski lodge! Not the little one! The fancy one!”
“Who all is there?” Earl demanded. He’d grown tired and had shifted his tone to all serious. He put the edge back on the rope.
The man was huffing and puffing, eyes wide as he watched Earl’s knife. “All his gang! Like thirty of us!”
Damn! Earl thought.
“B-but he stays in the private residence behind the lodge!” the man screamed in a panic. “Just him and whatever floozy he takes home that night!”
“Just him?” Earl demanded. “No guards?” Just a small nick with the blade.
“O-one! We take turns! E-everyone just sleeps on the porch when we’re on watch!”
“One last question, and you’re free,” Earl promised. “Who’s buying the kids?”
“I don’t know, man! I swear! Yes! I seen ‘em moving kids! But I got no knowledge of the business, man! I just work to eat and stay alive!”
Earl had no intention of letting this snake go warn anyone. “Thanks,” he said calmly as he made good on his promise. He freed the man with the assistance of gravity, giving the rope the final cut it needed to release tension. The man let out a scream as he fell, momentarily disappearing into a steep snow drift, the reappearing as he smashed into the rocks thirty feet below and rolled downhill. Earl watched him bounce off a tree before stopping against another one below that. He wasn’t moving. I’d rather starve than help traffic kids, you piece-o’-dung…
“I think we should trust him,” Jeff said. “He probably coulda picked us off while we’re over here gabbing.”
Not likely, Josh thought. He’d kept a close eye on their new friend, even though they had all let their guard down a bit and followed him to his hideout near the water. The would-be high-school senior had already proven himself to be quite capable in a fight, having been involved in everything thrown at the gun range members thus far, including the early rescue of Savannah. But Josh had always had a fondness for his favorite nephew. He’d not grown nearly as close to Eli’s other two kids—twenty-year-old Shay and thirteen-year-old James.
“Alright...” Josh conceded a bit. “If Stu wants to, we’ll at least hear him out.”
“My curiosity is definitely piqued. I’m strongly considering that he may be telling the truth. I mean, ‘your life depends on it’ has a somewhat ominous tone,” he said, actually chuckling just a bit.
“I guess that’s it, then.” Josh led his group back up the lawn. Nick had advised that they follow him to the house he was holed up at—there was a fairly well concealed firepit, he explained, and he had rice and beans to share. They kept quiet on the walk up the hill, which pleased everyone just fine. Stu had tried to prod Nick a few times, and he kept putting him off. Neither Nick nor Josh wanted to be distracted while they were walking.
The trio had been standing near the saltwater inlet, Josh keeping his back to it while he watched Nick build the fire in the backyard firepit of what was probably someone’s expensive retirement home at one point.
“So, just what—” Stu started to ask but was cut off by Josh, who shot him a look.
“So, the multicam could have been bought online. What unit were you with?”
“Been retired for over five years, now,” Nick explained. He figured he might have to swap stories with Josh to earn some trust. “Did a full career, retired Master Sergeant…was a light infantry sniper for most of it. But didn’t get to do as much fun stuff as a senior NCO.” He scanned Josh’s face in the gray afternoon light to gauge his believability. “Retired out of 25th ID,” he said, referring to the Infantry Division out of Hawaii. “And you?”
Quid pro quo, huh? Josh thought. I guess trust is a two-way street. “I was in for five years, 3rd Cav. Did my tours on both sides of the build-up in ’07.”
“Mosul…” Nick said, impressed. “I heard that was some tough dirt…I was with 10th Mountain back then. We’d just gotten back from Afghanistan at that point.” And like that the two men had broken through ninety percent of their trust issues.
