Uncertain Times Page 8

  “What’s your name, buddy?” Matt inquired after he made his way to the man.

  “It’s Mike, why?”

  “What’re you looking for, Mike?”

  “I need to use the toilet?”

  “Why didn’t you simply ask one of us?” Jim said, as he approached the other side of the man.

  “So, how many people do you have up here anyway?” Mike wanted to know.

  “I thought you needed to use the bathroom?”

  “Yeah, I do. Maybe we can talk when I get out.”

  “Bathroom’s over there.” Matt pointed.

  Mike walked in, closed the door and immediately turned the water on. Jim and Matt were standing outside the door and thought it odd. After getting his attention, Jim motioned Bill over.

  “Can you unlock this door?” Jim asked.

  Bill paused with a questioning look until he saw Matt and Jim pull their handguns from their holsters. Bill quietly unlocked the door and stepped back.

  “Whatcha doing there, buddy?” Jim asked Mike as he and Matt entered.

  “What the hell are you doing with those guns?” Mike replied as he turned sideways.

  “We need to talk to you for a minute,” Matt said.

  “What’s this about? I was just using the toilet.”

  “Easy, fella, now why don’t you come with us?”

  “Toilet?” Jim said, while looking at Matt and Bill.

  They walked Mike away from the other newcomers. Once they were out of sight, Jim put a pillow case over his head and took him into a room in the cabin’s basement.

  After taking his hood off, Jim told him to strip.

  “What?” Mike asked.

  “I said strip boy, or we’ll do it for you!” Jim demanded.

  Mike started taking his clothes off and a cellphone fell out of his pants pocket.

  “Well, look what we have here!” Rick said. “How the hell did you get this on the truck if you were abducted, and what’s the tattoo on your back?”

  “Looks German,” said Jim. “Hog tie him to the chair, boys. We need to perform another interrogation.”

  Mike kept pleading with them to let him go until Rick shoved one of his socks in his mouth and put the pillowcase back on.

  “Matt, can you take this phone to Jessie and see if she can get it to work, and ask Bill and Matthew to join us down here?” Rick said.

  “Right away.”

  “It’s a German Special Forces tattoo,” Bill said as he walked into the room a few minutes later.

  “How do you know?”

  “They had me stationed in Germany while I was in the Army a hundred years ago.”

  “Why would he have one of these?”

  “Looks like we have a well trained mole?”

  “It appears so,” Rick replied.

  Jim brought over a large water bottle and a towel. “Can you guys lean Mike’s chair back and hold him please?”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” asked Rick.

  “I saw this on a movie. I believe its called water boarding.” Jim winked at Rick. “Can you help me, Matthew? Take the sock out of his mouth. Matthew here’s an expert at water boarding. He says no one has ever drowned on his watch. But hey, no promises, right?”

  “No!” Mike yelled. “I’m only here because I was ordered to find the missing assault group sent into the mountains to locate insurgents.”

  “Do we look like insurgents?” asked Matthew. “We’re Americans, and you’re on our land. You’re the insurgents, you bastard.”

  “How did you happen to be in the truck with the others, and why did you have a cellphone?” questioned Rick.

  “One of us is always in the trucks loaded with people ordered to re-education. I was supposed to turn the phone on once I found you.”

  “What the hell’s re-education?” asked Rick. “Let me guess, the people you’ve rounded up don’t want to go along with your plans?”

  “I have a better question,” said Jim. “Why were you supposed to turn the phone on?”

  “Once my superiors received the signal, they were going to send in a SPEC-OPS team to eliminate you, but it wouldn’t turn on. See, its fine now. You can let me go. I don’t even know where we are.”

  “Matthew, go find Jessie and tell her to destroy the phone. Don’t turn it on!” Rick told him. “If anyone comes, you’re dead, buddy!”

  “No one’s coming, I assure you.”

  “Why are you volunteering information? We had an American law enforcement official in here recently, and he didn’t want to cooperate one bit. Why are you being so forthcoming?”

  “I don’t believe we belong here,” Mike said.

  “So you’re going to help us? Why? Will it help you sleep better at night or are you just playing us?”

  “I really want to help. I can give you radio frequencies, patrol routes, supply routes and troop strength for this sector.”

  “Give us something to verify what you’re offering and we’ll keep you alive for now, unless we decide we’re being set up,” Jim agreed.

  November 18th

  The German we found in the convoy, who happened to be part of the U.N. invasion force has given up more information than we could have anticipated. So far we‘ve done incredibly well in obtaining supplies which will help in the long term and have eliminated more than two-dozen enemy combatants as well. However, something still doesn’t sit right about this guy.

  “Whoever this guy is, he hasn’t been wrong so far,” Rick mentioned to Jim a couple of weeks later while they sat by the fireplace going over the next mission.

  Carl, Sassy and Monty lay on the throw rug in front of the fire.

  “I was skeptical at first, too, but he has proven himself. We should send him back into the lion’s den to see just how loyal he is.”

  “What if he gives us up?”

  “Then we’ll know for sure. He doesn’t know where he’s being held. It was dark when he got here and he’s been in the room since he arrived. We can incapacitate him then take him to town.”

  “Let’s go see what Doc has in his med kit.”

  “Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”

  —Thomas Carlyle

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mike agreed to help the cause. Doc gave him a tranquilizer before a small group took him down the mountain.

  “Wake up,” Jim said, shaking Mike a few hours later.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re close to a U.N. checkpoint. You can walk from here.”

  “Here’s the frequency you can contact us on,” Rick said, handing him a tiny slip of paper. “We will turn our radio on every Sunday at 7 p.m. for exactly five minutes. Oh, and if you screw us, we will find you.”

  “Good luck,” Jim said as the group slipped away into the darkness.

  “Do you think he’ll come through?” Matt asked.

  “We’ll find out in a couple of days.”

  November 23rd

  Some people want to celebrate Thanksgiving, others don’t. We do have so much to be thankful for compared to many, many people, but it just doesn’t feel like the holiday season. Staying alive and protecting the group is all most of us can think about. The resistance is growing, which is good, but that means the enemy will eventually and ultimately start to hit back even harder. Only time will tell.

  The mountains were a popular spot for recreation cabins, used summer and winter. So hopefully having more people heading up to the area just looked like common citizens were getting away from the violence, checking on their cabins, or both.

  “The recruiting is going good,” Bill said as he and Jim worked on the perimeter in front of the cave opening.

  “We still need to be careful who we bring into the fold.”

  “We’re being as meticulous as we can, but it’s difficult to figure out who some people are. Do you think Mike will contact you tonight?”

  “I’m not overly optimistic.”

  “Are
you sticking with the same plan?”

  “Yes. I think it’s the safest option we have right now.”

  With more people helping, they were able to construct multiple perimeters falling back up the mountain to the cave entrance on the opposite side of the cabin. The work had been hard, but kept the people busy and gave them a reason for continuing on in the harsh times.

  There were bunkers built throughout the perimeter to allow for supplies and stockpiles of ammo, while doubling as a shelter for those on watch.

  That evening, Jim and Rick walked through the perimeter and stopped by each post on their way to try and make contact with Mike.

  “OK,” Rick said out of breath, as he walked back to Jim’s location a couple of miles southwest of the cave. “I believe we’re set.”

  “Turning the radio on now,” Jim announced.

  “How long do we give him to make contact?”

  “After five minutes, we’ll shut it off and try again next Sunday.”

  The nearly full moon, a pale orb peeking over the snow-capped ridges, brightened the landscape as the men sat and waited. The aurora to the north jetted across the heavens, intermingling and almost colliding together in a live, dancing show above them.

  “Do you hear that?” Rick said three minutes later, standing up and scanning the area below with night-vision binoculars.

  “We have incoming!”

  Both men started running for their lives. Seconds later they were knocked off their feet and slammed to the ground, their breath ripped out of their lungs and their ears exploded with a thunderous sound. The sky suddenly appeared to be on fire, blinding them with a flash of light.

  “Rick, where are you?” Jim yelled as he scrambled back to his feet moments later.

  He couldn’t even hear himself. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Rick. His lips moved but Jim couldn’t hear anything. They stood there, leaning on each other as they looked down into the valley where they had put the radio. A precision airstrike had wiped acres of trees, shrubs and grass completely off the map.

  “Can you hear me?” Rick asked minutes later.

  “You sound like a damn robot,” Jim told him.

  “We better clear out of the area.”

  The main room looked massive and had been made decades before by blowing shape charges with dynamite into the different layers of bedrock. Doing so allowed for the construction of the countless tunnels and providing access to the heart of the mountain. Several rooms had been constructed off the tunnels. The new residents used raw materials, like the trees they harvested nearby, to reinforce the ceiling and walls of the rooms and tunnels. But on this night, it felt as if the whole mountain could come down on top of them.

  “What the hell’s going on?” a man yelled as he struggled to stay on his feet.

  “It’s an earthquake!” A woman responded as dust and rock fell from above their heads and lights hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth. “We need to get out of here!”

  The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started, and only minor damage had been done to the inside.

  Jim and Rick made it back about an hour later and explained what had happened.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Jim told the now larger group. “We’ll continue with our plans and strike back at the enemy whenever and wherever we can.”

  A staging area for combat operations had been set up next to the main room. A kitchen and dining area, a restroom and shower area were constructed, too. The gray water was piped outside to a leach field which the plumbers in the group had constructed. Solids were collected in buckets and burned at night, in secluded areas hundreds of yards from the cave entrance.

  An armory was constructed and heavily secured. A tall, slender redhead was put in charge of the room. She had worked in an armory while on active duty in the Army and could break down weapons for cleaning just as well, if not better than some of the other veterans. Her name was Evelyn, but she went by Eve. She was feisty and didn’t take attitude from anyone. Some of the younger men called her “Evilyn” behind her back. Jim had asked her on a few occasions to join the combat teams, but so far she had been reluctant.

  November 24th

  We might not ever find out for sure if the German who called himself Mike gave us up or had been tortured for the information which sent the bomb intended to silence the resistance. Luckily we were cautious and enacted a plan to make sure we wouldn’t be wiped from the map. Our little community continues to grow and prosper, even under the current conditions. It comes with a price however. There’s always some sort of issue to deal with when it comes to the growing populace. We will continue to deal with each one as it arises and do what we can to survive.

  A couple days after the bombing, one of the recon teams came back with some interesting items.

  “Where did you get those?” Jim asked Naythan as Danny and the rest of their team brought in a couple of crates from which were emanating a horrendous noise.

  “We heard gunfire coming from a ranch. We moved in to investigate and found the rancher in a skirmish with some enemy troops. For coming to his aid, he gave us these chickens and piglets.”

  “I know just the person to tend to these animals,” Bill said.

  “Good job,” Jim told Naythan. “How many troops were there and how’d your team do?”

  “There were only four soldiers. We took them by surprise from their left flank. The men didn’t hesitate one bit.”

  “I’m happy to hear it. Keep up the good work.”

  The teams brought in people who could help in some way or had nowhere to go. They couldn’t offer sanctuary to everyone, or they would risk putting the rest of the compounds residence in danger, but they sometimes found it hard to turn people away. They felt good about how they helped and how they planned to help, by taking the country back from the invaders.

  The people with specialized skills or degrees in certain areas were put into groups after the screening process. They had carpenters, engineers, welders, plumbers and of course Jim’s favorite — machinists. Bill was the best machinist they had and modified or built whatever Jim wanted or needed. With the right tools and materials, he could build anything. Bill had made the suppressors for most of the weapons. The sniper rifles, machine-guns and handguns had them if needed. This made the teams and weapons multi-mission capable. Indoors or outdoors, the snipers were virtually invisible, allowing them to continue to engage without displacing as much.

  With more than fifty people to care for in the cave system alone, they were running low on food and vital cold weather supplies as December approached.

  A few of the men who had recently come to the community put a trap line together in order to take advantage of animals for food and pelts for warm clothing. They were good at it, too, bringing back wolves, foxes, lynx, marten, rabbits and squirrels. Not everything they brought back was edible, but all the pelts made clothing and blankets, as well as trading material for desperately needed supplies. Classes were set up for anyone wanting to learn how to trap or tan hides.

  Jim and Bill told the individuals manning the trap line not to venture north because of the large traps they had made on the other side of the mountain to hopefully catch enemy troops. Only a few of the current occupants knew about Bill’s cabin and they certainly didn’t know about the rest of the tunnel system, for security reasons. Jim, Bill and the others kept in radio contact with the cave community when they weren’t among them.

  The plan to plant crops in the spring felt so far away. Once in a while a foot patrol would come across a moose and bring it back to feed the growing community. Bulls were what they looked for, but when food became more desperate, a cow would need to be taken. Even though they had an abundance of meat when hunters first brought a moose back, it didn’t last long with so many mouths to feed.

  It turned out easier to move around than it had been in the beginning since most everyone had snowshoes now. The U.N. troops had professional-grade snowsho
es, and the militia was happy to acquire them.

  With the cold winter hammering down on the mountain, most of the occupants stayed inside the cave unless they were part of the militia and had to go on a patrol or stand sentry duty on the perimeter.

  As December rolled around, a select few wanted to be festive. The closer Christmas came, more decorations could be seen everywhere in the underground compound, which made “Shangri-la” look even better.

  One of the men, a history teacher, had set up a classroom for the kids, to allow them to continue learning, have a sense of normalcy and stay out of trouble. Several of the kids protested the idea of school, especially the kids who were orphaned. With no parents to tell them what to do, they at first thought they didn’t need to listen to anyone. This was stopped pretty quickly by the adults, and the kids soon realized they had it better than those on the outside.

  December 20th

  Most people appear to be in good spirits. Others who are away from their family or have lost the loved ones they would normally be spending this time of year with are having a harder time. The cold weather and the living conditions, although quite well considering, are taking their toll on several of those who’ve decided to make this place their home. We’re doing the best we can, but at times, I don’t know if it’s enough.

  “It looks like it’s working out great for these fine people,” Bill mentioned to Jim as he walked up to him at the cave entrance one January morning.

  “Are we doing the right thing here?” Jim asked him.

  “I believe we are. Why, are you having doubts? It’s a little late for that.”

  “I really don’t want to do anything wrong or give anyone false hope.”

  “We, as in the whole group up on this mountain, came here for a reason. We have banded together for a righteous cause and will do whatever we can to retain our freedom.”

  “Thanks, brother,” Jim said. “Winter always brings us down.”

  The radios came to life with a perimeter alert and a request for the doctor.

  “We have wounded at Talladega, they’re from last night’s patrol,” a woman’s voice said over the radio. “We also have one killed in action.”