Distance, Chapter 51

51

Thursday morning

September Seventh

10:00 a.m.

The big, rusty bulldozer smoothed the last of the trench cover as the last of the Weerstand fighters left the muddy ravine.  Down on the Des Moines River, a similar sanitation operation had already been completed, with the attackers boats hauled from the river and trucked to a local borrow pit. By nine a.m. they had been mostly stripped of useable parts and the hulls crushed by bulldozers and a large belly-dump earthmover.

One hundred seven attackers were killed in the fighting, ten were taken as wounded. Thirty Weerstand had fanned out to search for stragglers, none had yet been found.  Five Weerstand had been hurt during the night, none due to enemy fire.

Doug and Arie had arrived on scene after Doug’s shift ended. Roeland was in the northern part of the county all night, far away from the fighting.   No law enforcement officers were present at the site, nor any military. The bodies had been gathered, weapons and ammunition removed, and radios taken.  With utmost efficiency, the raiding teams had been laid in common graves cut by the blades of bulldozers, and immediately covered under several feet of wet Iowa earth.

None had identification of any kind, nor did they carry money, wallets, watches or any coins. Half or so carried a small green waist-belt filled with ‘energy bars’.  The drink holster had some kind of sports drink.   The packs had been loaded in the back of an old Chevy one-ton utility service truck, where Doug spotted them before the metal doors were closed. A similarly beat up Dodge panel van held a pile of mismatched rifles and semi-automatic handguns, on the floor of a cage within the van.

“These are Regent,” Doug told Arie, looking at the containers and packaging.  “These are RNEW. I’m certain of it.”

“Charlie! A moment please,” Arie called to a forty-something man, clad in farmer overalls and a well-worn farm coat.

“Adriaan.  What can I do for you?”

“Tell Douglas here about these men,” Arie said, waving to the gravesite.

The large man considered the request for a moment thoughtfully before replying. “Single minded. Relentless, but they seemed not to have a skillful leader. I believe that one of the men captured was part of the leader group,” Charlie replied. He seemed the kind of man that would be most at home at a feed store.  He carried a beautiful lever-action Winchester.

“What happened when the shooting started? How did it start?” Doug asked.

“One of our young ones made a noise from that hillside. They heard it. It seemed like every gun they had fired at the noise. No random fire, no discussion, no order. It was directed right at that spot.  Look at the tree there,” Charlie pointed.  The sixteen-inch diameter tree had been felled by rifle fire, and many of the trees around it had been torn apart. “That tree landed next to the young man who made the noise.  Had it not been for the earth berm, he’d have been cut to pieces.”

“Singular focus,” Doug said to himself.

“When most of them had ceased firing, two or three of them tried to move them forward. We then fired on them from the west side of the ravine before they could reload. They then began to fire on us, and the east side caught them in the back. They never panicked or ran.  They stayed their ground and fired until we killed them,” Charlie explained.

“The wounded? What of them?”

“Most were wounded several times. Some had spinal injuries.  Some were shot in their gun hand. Even so, they all were trying to fight up until the point where they were disarmed.”

“Did they do as they were told once you disarmed them?” Doug asked.

Charlie seemed surprised by the question. “Well, yes. They gave up.”

“They received new orders. From you.” Doug said.

“Douglas, we need to leave now,” Arie said, looking to the east. A helicopter was moving toward them, several miles away still, but close enough to warrant caution.

“These drugs in food. You are sure of this?” Arie said to Doug as they drove further west, away from both the Farm and the ambush site. Arie noted that the helicopter continued to fly west, apparently up the Des Moines River.

“This is more extreme than what I witnessed personally, but from what I read of the research, this is in keeping with the effects of the RNEW when fully activated,” Doug said. “Do you think that’s their helicopter?” he asked, looking through the rear window at the disappearing tree line.

“It would make sense if they are as organized as we suspect. We do not know if the plans for last night were provided to them, or if they were generated by those that attacked. We have to assume that they are looking for their missing friends,” Arie said, point toward the distant dot that was the helicopter.

“What happens next? What if another bunch comes?” Doug asked.

“Eyes are watching for many miles. If they come, they will be met again.”

“Where did they come from? Do you know?”

“The boats were launched on the Missouri side, downriver at the Fort Pike boat launch.  They then came upstream past the Battle of Athens historic site, where they were first heard, although we couldn’t get a good idea on how many were coming.  Then past Farmington and Bonaparte, where one of our people with night vision told us more. They came up Coppers Creek and beached there. Then they came overland up the drainage. Before the launch point, we do not know.”

Doug continued. “So they know—if they’re looking for them—that these raiders launched from that point…Fort Pike? The trucks and trailers are probably there, so they’d look up river.”

“The trucks and trailers are gone. They were gone before dawn,” Arie said.

“OK,” Doug said, thinking about a logical next step. “So they either come and investigate or they move along.”

“Yes. We hope for the latter but plan for the former,” Arie said.

They drove on, heading to the northwest, stopping at a small cemetery. Arie didn’t speak, but exited the old farm truck quietly, heading into an obviously much older part of the graveyard.  Doug quietly followed from a respectful distance.   Arie came to stop before a large, simple marker, stained with lichen. 

“My grandparents,” Arie said quietly.  “They died this day, seventy-five years ago. They had gone to Keokuk, to market. A madman drove his truck into their car at sixty miles per hour.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Douglas.  There is madness in the world, there is evil. That same man had that same day run over a ten year old on a bicycle, and before he could be tried, he hung himself in a jail cell,” Arie said, sweeping a few leaves away from the base of the stone. “What you have told us is that the company you work for has created evil that can be summoned with mere words.   That men can be corrupted by eating of this food and of this drink. Douglas, what I heard this morning forces me to say this: You must leave this company, or you must leave our farm. I cannot abide this.”

“I’ve already written my letter of resignation.” 

“Free yourself of this evil. You must do it soon, Douglas. It will consume all those who are near it.”

“I understand.”

2:00 p.m.

Arie and Doug told all at the farm about the attack and outcome, and then Arie had taken a packet of papers taken from the attackers, along with some captured radios, and taken them to Jake.  Doug didn’t remember anything carried by Arie to the truck; the items must’ve been stashed there by one of the Weerstand while they were out of the truck.

Doug was exhausted after his shift and the mornings’ activities. After the mid-day meal, he showered (with Julie, to save water of course) and changed into sleeping clothes.  Julie was ready for her mid-day nap, and Doug was asleep within a few minutes.

His dreams were not pleasant.

Saturday morning,

September Ninth

7:00 a.m.

Doug worked alongside several of the Segher cousins on the morning chores, happy to be relieved from patrol duty.  A second night of cold rain made the experience miserable, with boots that hadn’t dried, sketchy rain gear, and a cold, constant wind. He’d been unpleasantly surprised by Kurt Segher early the previous morning, who stealthily overtook Doug’s observation position unnoticed. Doug’s radio had failed, and he hadn’t noticed it—it appeared to be transmitting, had a full battery pack, but something had failed in the circuitry.  The base station operator, a Segher cousin by the name of Susan, had followed protocol and tried to contact Doug with a code-word response with no luck.  When the other observation posts in the area also failed to reach Doug, prescribed plans were put into motion.

Kurt was the first to arrive, silently arriving in Doug’s observation post as Doug looked out toward a blackened tree line. He’d nearly had a heart attack as Kurt poked him in the back with a bayonet, fixed on his rifle.  Kurt also had the advantage of third-generation night vision, one of four such setups within the Weerstand. Doug didn’t really stand a chance.

Kurt provided Doug a new radio, and disappeared back into the dark rain. Doug had three more hours of watching and listening to the wind and rain, with regular radio checks.

In his time on the Farm, Doug had learned more about small farm egg and dairy production than he’d learned in twenty years in commercial food production, and a fair amount about small-scale, home based food preservation as well.  When he wasn’t spending precious time with Julie or on patrol, he read from the many resources in print at the Farm. Some were County Extension agent publications; some were commercial. Some, like a well-worn, stained book by Carla Emery, had obviously been loved to death.   Doug made a note to try to find a copy.  All the while, he was counting down the days he had left here, before returning back to Denver.

“Back to a farmhand, huh Doug?” Jake Segher asked.

“Kind of suits me. Peaceful. No one sticking a bayonet in your ribs,” Doug said as Kurt laughed.

“Got a minute? I could use a hand over in the shed,” Jake said. Kurt went off to another outbuilding.

“Sure. I’m sure this manure will wait,” Doug replied, putting down the mucking shovel. “What’s up?”

“Something to show you. You might be thinking about it when you go back to Regent,” Jake said with narrowing eyes.

“OK,” Doug said, not knowing quite what to make of the comment.

Inside the equipment shed, the cage had been dramatically expanded with the additions of chain-link panels with copper wire woven through the sections and grounded.  Six large tables were placed inside the cage.

“This is the gear taken from the raiders,” Doug said. “Why’s it in here?”

“Because every stick of it was chipped. Every rifle, every magazine. Every vest, belt, holster and bandolier. Every meal pack. Every piece of this is traceable.”

Doug noted that none of the gear matched—there were well-worn, filthy equipment packs and brand-new kits and rifles scattered on the table. Someone had at least grouped the equipment by type, with AR types on one table, AK’s on another, bolt actions on two more, handguns of many styles in a pile next to mismatched magazines, bandoliers, vests, and a five-gallon bucket of loose rounds. A pile of knives, bayonets and machetes lay on the floor.

“How…” Doug started before being cut off.

“Someone took a long, long time to do this.  Didn’t happen overnight,” Jake said. “More interestingly are the chips themselves. RFID of course. Eastern European design, manufactured in China; two, maybe three years ago. The coding is interesting, too. The equipment here represents three distinct operational units. The database I’ve compiled inventoried all of it. There’s a numeric order here, where each unit is generally comprised of similar numbers of men, similar mixes of bolt-action and semi-auto, similar varieties of weapons with non-matching ammunition.”

“So each unit…is a mish-mash of men, weapons, calibers…” Doug asked.

“Yes. Three units, generally the same personnel count, generally equipped with the same variety of gear. This had to be deliberate.”

“Why would they do this?”

“So they could shoot with whatever they can find,” Jake said. “They’ve chipped it I’d guess for inventory, but also for tracking. None of this has active transmitter ability—all is passive but has a fair responsive range, up to a hundred meters with an off-the-shelf reader. Which is where you come in.”

“Uh, OK, how exactly?”

“The chips in these do not record signals that ping them—meaning that they can be scanned by anyone, anywhere, and there’s no record of it. Newer chips can tell an administrator who has scanned the chip, when, where, and how many times.  I’ve got a reader that I want you to take with you. It will only scan this type of chip; record what it’s scanned and where; and do it to a five hundred meter radius, very quickly and quietly. Frequently enough to get a good reading, not frequently enough to draw attention.”

“Attention?” Doug asked, surprised.

“Anyone that’s paying attention should have countermeasures in place to detect frequencies that are pinging their equipment. This should register as nothing more than rogue signals or reflected transmissions. It does not operate in a predictable pattern in either timing or signal strength,” Jake said.

“And you don’t think they’re watching?” Doug asked.

“I don’t know. This is not without risk,” Jake said, looking Doug directly in the eye. “You’re heading back to Des Moines, then to Denver come Monday. You then work there until your resignation, when you return. You may then head to points unknown. The data you collect could prove very interesting.”

“What exactly is this scanner? This reader?”

“When we had reliable cell phones, we’d use that. A smart phone with a little quiet upgrading, a little GPS tracking and data recorder. Now that most of the cell system is dead, along with most satellites, most smart phones are paperweights. So are tablets. But not the old-fashioned PDA,” Jake said, sliding an old Palm Tungsten T5 out of his pocket and handed it to Doug.

“Wow. I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Doug replied, flipping open the worn aluminum hard case and looking at the T5 like an old friend.  “I had a T3. Loved that thing.”

“There’s an application on here, buried underneath a chess game. You beat the chess game on the first level, lose the second at ‘check’, win the third, and the program activates and runs for twenty-four hours and includes location tracking and a motion sensor. It’ll shut down if the unit is stationary for more than an hour. The second time you play, you forfeit immediately and the program activates. There is plenty of internal storage that’s dedicated to the tracking program, outside of any other file storage you might want to include,” Jake said. “You in?”

“How do I transmit the information?”

“You don’t. There’s no way to do it outside of a hard dock and a sync with a trusted computer carrying the unlock algorithm,” Jake said, pointing toward an old computer on the workbench. “This is old school.”

“You said motion tracking—but the GPS network is dead,” Doug said.

“Commercial telecom systems aren’t all dead. This will ping signals off of whatever and record the location information by time. You’ll need to record when you activate it—put it on the ‘notes’ app—‘Arrived in Des Moines Oh-Nine-Thirty’. That’ll let us synchronize in general terms, which is good enough. Nowhere near as accurate as a GPS, but easily enough information to provide a more global view,” Jake said. “So…you in?”

Doug thought for only a moment before replying. “Yeah. I’m in.”

11:00 a.m.

Lunch preparations were well underway when Julie’s brother Peter burst into the Kitchen.  Doug had been slicing potatoes and nicked himself.

“It’s Molly.  I think she has the flu,” Peter said. The room, a moment before bustling, went dead quiet. Maria switched off the burners on the stove and quickly took off her apron.

“Fever?” Maria asked, gathering up some things into a bag.

“Yes. One oh two. It’s been climbing since eight,” Peter said as Arie entered the room.

“We should see Doctor Jameson at once,” Arie said. Doug didn’t even know Arie was in the house.

“Where is his office?” Doug asked.

Julie checked the calendar. “He’s in Mount Pleasant today,” she replied.  Doug didn’t know there was such a schedule posted on the calendar.

“Peter, is she here?”

“She’s in the Suburban. Beth is watching Ian,” Peter said. Baby Ian was not quite eight months old.

“Maria, you go with Peter and Molly. We’ll follow.  Douglas, would you care to drive?”

“You bet,” he said as Julie handed him his jacket.  The rain was picking up again. “I’ll let Jake know.” Julie looked very worried, as did Maria. 

Doug retrieved the Jeep from the equipment shed, and filled Jake in on Molly’s condition. He quickly informed the rest of the family via radio, and word then spread throughout the network.

Arie helped Julie into the front seat of the Jeep, before sitting behind her on the passenger side.  They quickly made their way through the barriers at the Farm inner driveway, and then headed west to Mount Pleasant, a little more than fifteen miles away. Doug turned on the AM radio as they followed Peter’s Suburban.  The host seemed bitter, complaining about the President’s inability to gather enough momentum to deal with any one crisis effectively, causing all of the immediate problems to be much worse.  The bombardment of multiple crises was just beyond Lambert’s ability.   Arie reached over and shut off the radio. 

The rest of the trip was made in silence. 

Distance, Chapter 50

50

Wednesday morning,

September Sixth

8:00 a.m.

Julie’s appointment with the family OB/GYN provided Doug an opportunity to check in with the FDA office via email from Fairfield, and hopefully get a better perspective of the world outside of the Farm. Doug would’ve preferred to stay for the appointment, but was shooed out of the office for an hour, with both of the ladies smiling.

The National Guard center had three civilian guards in full body armor, watching over the mostly empty facility.  Doug checked in with his Federal I.D., signed in on a digital pad and then had to use a thumbprint pad to gain access to one of the secure computer terminals. He wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of email, voice message and conflicting messages. He checked the emails in order, oldest-first, skipping over the departmental briefings, security memos and news summaries.

The first surprise was the replacement of Lorraine Bancroft with three new executive assistants.  Each had prepared what appeared to be a personal greeting; each greeting appeared to be jockeying for position or preference, as if the FDA were now a multi-level marketing scheme and each ‘Doug-level’ liaison was worth a certain number of points.

The next shock was a completely new itinerary and ‘encouragement’ to proceed with best time to the first location on the new itinerary, which was in the next email, abandoned in favor of a completely different strategy. 

The newer emails limited the travel, and then revoked it completely. The most recent emails directed Doug to return to Denver on September eleventh for meetings on the twelfth.

Doug skimmed the emails again quickly, seeing the pattern of confusion but sensing more.  Unlike his previous visit, the briefings, memos and news summaries were fully downloadable…which Doug thought was probably a breach in FDA security protocol. Doug weighed the risks, while fishing out a flash drive. He downloaded all of them for later reading.    As he completed the download, one of the assistants ‘pinged’ him for a video call. He authorized the call, and was greeted by an overly groomed late twenty something male. None of the names provided in the prior emails looked ‘male’. 

“Good morning, Mister Peterson. Sorry to disturb you are on vacation. I’m Britt Redmon, first assistant to the Secretary.” ‘First assistant my ass,’ Doug thought.

“Good morning. Just getting caught up on emails. Looks like things have been busy,” Doug said, not asking about Lorraine.

“They have, yes. You’ve by now seen your new itinerary, correct?” Redmon asked. Doug instantly disliked the man.

“There is a substantial reorganization coming to the Department, and to several other departments.  The Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary wanted to include you in the conversation, hence the meeting next week.”

“OK, fair enough. What about the production issues here in the Midwest? Are those issues magically resolved?” Doug said with some irritation.

“Oh, no. Those are just lower priorities at this time.  Given the fluidity of the security in that region, the Department does not believe that your prior assignment is worth the risk.”

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Doug thought to himself, but forced himself to sit back in his chair as if surprised at the revelation. “Sorry. I didn’t really believe the news.  I should be able to get out of Des Moines on Monday for a Tuesday meeting.”

“Would you be in a position to receive any additional information from the Under Secretary prior to your return?” Redmon asked, looking at the camera over the tops of his overly thin glasses.

“No,” Doug replied flatly.  “This is my last trip into town before I come back on Monday.”

“Unfortunate,” Redmon replied with raised eyebrows.

“Such are current communications. I look forward to meeting you next week, Britt,” Doug said.

“That will have to wait. I will be in another location. Good day,” the ‘first assistant’ said before ending the videoconference.

Doug had about ten more minutes before he had to leave to pick up Julie.  In that time, he wrote his letter of resignation, effective September thirtieth, and sent it directly to the Secretary, bypassing the assistants, the Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary.  He cited the need to be close to Julie during the later months of her pregnancy, and wished the Department well.

“How’d everything go?” Doug asked as Julie and Cath climbed in the Jeep. He turned the radio down, after listening to the forecast…rain by evening.

“Couldn’t be better!” Julie said with a big smile as she kissed Doug. “Everything’s just fine.”

“And what did you do for entertainment?” Cath asked.

“I read a bunch of emails, departmental news and then resigned from the FDA.”

“WOW! Effective now?  Say yes,” Julie said definitively.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so excited to be married to someone unemployed,” Doug said. “September thirtieth.”

“Not soon enough,” Cath said. “And of Regent? When for them?”

“Soon as I can,” Doug said as he started the Jeep. 

“Remember to stop at Stefana’s before we leave town,” Julie said.  Stefana was a friend of the family who had a retail maternity shop before the collapse. The shop now ran on trades of all kinds. 

“Not a problem,” Doug said.

A few minutes later they arrived at the small storefront, sandwiched between closed franchised coffee and sandwich shops. Stefana Groesbeck’s family had leased the land to the national franchises and had built the three shops turnkey in exchange for a sizeable signing bonus and favorable terms over the lease.  With the closure of the franchise outlets, the property and penalties were paid to the family, more than covering the development cost.

“You stay put and we’ll be right back!” Julie said to Doug, now feeling like a chauffeur.  He noted that Cath took a file box into the store, which Doug figured was a front for a cell of the Weerstand.

Doug had not been invited to attend the meetings, held on three consecutive nights off the farm. He didn’t take offense at all—as he’d finally been cleared for night patrol.  In the distance, two nights before, Doug had been in a watchman’s location, a half-mile from the house.  The still night was interrupted by rifle and semi-automatic weapons fire…and not a single word was heard on any of the radio frequencies about it. 

It had been impossible to tell the range of the brief firefight; Doug wasn’t that experienced in such matters, and the fickle wind could’ve carried the sound for a very long way.  With no reports coming in from any of the farms, men from the Weerstand had to be hunting raiding parties.   The following morning, Arie took one of the small pickups from the farm, alone, and returned two hours later. Doug noticed that the bed of the pickup held a covered bundle of something that was missing when Arie returned.

The town was ‘quiet’ of course, with only a handful of shops of any kind open for trading, and Doug noted that each of them had someone nearby with a shotgun or rifle in plain sight.  On top of the hardware store, two men with rifles were positioned, and he noted that at least one other person had a large spotting scope atop the roof.  Most of the traffic in town was composed of bicycles with cargo trailers, although a few people rode in on horseback.  He turned up the radio to kill some time.

“…no idea what they’ve done. The shortages are everywhere, another unintended consequence of unending incremental regulation. Of course prices have been through the roof for years now, but as soon as stock becomes available, any ammunition not already in a pipeline to the Army or Homeland Security is snapped up in a frenzy that sharks would be proud of. It seems the only state left that has half a brain is Texas, now the home to ninety percent of firearms manufacturers in the country, and sixty percent of the ammunition manufacturers.”

‘You’ve visited the clue store,’ Doug thought of the talk show host.

“I don’t really see that changing any time soon, either, America. There are things going on in the East that demand our immediate action and the President is giving it lip service.  We’ve got thugs running around in packs and attacking entire towns from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes! Little towns! Farms! Where’s the Federal response? Where the Hell is Homeland? It’s on you, my friends, because they’re covering their own asses. The Feds are sending ‘advisory teams’ to the states. Right. Like we need more people playing dictator and demanding our allegiance!  It’s on you to defend yourself and your family…but thanks to the actions of this creeping regulatory parasite we know as the Federal Government, a whole lot of you will be defending yourself with bird guns and revolvers and no more than a hundred rounds of ammunition of all kinds per address. You’re in violation of that? Federal implications. You defend yourself and are investigated by even your local cop? He is mandated to report any and all findings of firearms, ammunition, reloading equipment of any kind. Unregistered thirty-round mag in fifteen states? Jail time and forfeiture of assets, citizen.  If Officer Friendly doesn’t report you? Well, thanks to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, his jurisdiction can lose all Federal funding and HE can be investigated!”

“This guy’s on a roll,” Doug said aloud, wondering whom the host was.

“This is where we are, America.  This is what we’ve come to.  Too late to fix it within the framework of legislation, because the legislators threw you under the bus.  Re-read the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence my friends, and keep going from there. Then ask yourself honestly, are you are in any better shape NOW, than the Founders were as they contemplated revolution. Are you? Hell, no you’re not. In fact, you’re probably much worse off and you just don’t realize it.”

“Where’s your flash point? Where do you decide that you want the Constitution back? Is it after the thugs steal everything you’ve earned and built? Then you’re late—because they already have.  Your retirement funds were nationalized, remember? That 401K you worked so hard for? That investment account? That 529 plan you worked so hard to fund so that your kids could go to school? Remember when you could choose your own doctor, and decide for yourself if you wanted to buy insurance—or not? BAM—nationalized so that the Ponzi could continue. Remember when you could order ammunition and have it delivered? As much as you could afford? Remember walking into a gun shop and being able to walk out with a rifle? Or three? Remember those days? Remember folks who had licenses for Collectible and Antique firearms? They used to buy weapons and have them shipped to their houses!  That’s now a Federal prison sentence!  Mark my words: They’re going to come out with some cockamamie scam with rainbow colored money and start it all over again. If you get in their way, they’ll run you over—they’ll find a way to outspend you, wear you down, deny your God-given rights, deny your Federal train-wreck of a medical insurance program…and kill you by doing so.  This is how they plan to win. This is how they plan to wipe out opposition,” the host said as Julie and Cath opened the doors to the Jeep. Cath was carrying a different box that seemed heavier.

“Whatcha got on?” Julie asked.

“Some guy on fire,” Doug replied as the commentator continued. Cath answered.

“Rice. Danny Rice. He’s down in Hannibal,” Cath said, listening to the continuing monologue. “It’s too bad no one’s been listening to him. He’s been saying this for years.”

“It’s coming. It’s coming as sure as the sun will rise. There’s a real fine line between sovereign citizen and partisan. A real fine line.”

“Honey, you should be getting some sleep. You’re on watch at midnight,” Julie told Doug at half-past four. 

“I know. Almost done,” he said. “Arie’s up at six, right?”

“Yes, then on watch,” Julie said. Doug couldn’t get over how pretty she looked.  “Why?”

“I think he should read this. I’ll write a note for him.”

“If you’re not in bed in fifteen minutes, I’ll not be happy,” Julie said with eyebrows raised and chin lowered.

“I’ll be there,” Doug said with a little grin. She’d made him a light dinner that would be followed by ‘breakfast’ before he went on watch.

He was tired, but he plowed ahead, with just a few more pages to cover.  He’d been reading more than two hundred pages of briefings sent out to Federal administrators, succinctly covering news events, foreign and domestic, that could have an impact on Federal operations.  The distilled news briefs had been provided for decades to those in D.C., and now were produced and coordinated in all Federal zones in North America and in the handful of remaining overseas bases. 

The briefs clinically described ‘bandits’ robbing numerous local, state and Federal locations; first of food, later of other equipment; later still of people, thought to be held for ransom. No analysis or other commentary was made—the statements were reported for the analysis of the reader.

President Lambert’s coverage included meeting with families of two Medal of Honor winners from a battle in Monterrey; his looking forward to the Supreme Court ruling on a number of crucial issues in October; and a pending address to the full Congress—the first since January—on September fifteenth.  No mention of the Vice President or any Cabinet members was made.

In Mexico, the briefs described current efforts in ‘pacification’ in the most general terms, without unit descriptions of any kind or any enlightenment of how the war was progressing.

Throughout the review of the briefs and the FDA departmental memos, there was very little—perhaps only a hundred words—covering the New Republic.  For such a dramatic threat—even a small group of radicals—Doug could not understand why so little coverage was provided.  The dearth of crop production in the Midwest in a general Federal briefing covered eight hundred words, and that particular brief was an update of a monthly projection.

For threats of secession, there was virtually no ‘news’ to report.   Doug wrote Arie as much, posing the question for Arie’s consideration.

September Sixth

11:35 p.m.

Julie’s wind-up alarm clock sounded next to Doug’s head, and he gently extricated himself from the soundly sleeping mother-to-be, curled into him after some brief, intense lovemaking.  Doug hadn’t ever dreamed that sex with a pregnant Julie could be so…incredible. To the contrary, he’d expected to be ‘cut off’. To their mutual delight, he was quite wrong.

‘Breakfast’ included hot tea, hard boiled eggs, smoked ham and biscuits, retrieved from a sealed container that Maria had set aside for the night watch.  The tea was quite strong, brewed automatically on a timer, and he poured the thermos full, saving a cup for the meal.  Doug ate quickly and suited up in black, cloth-type raingear before heading out to the equipment shed for a pre-patrol briefing.  The rain was spattering into the windows despite the wide, covered porch.

The waterproof rain shell and overalls were made of some kind of soft cloth that shed water, remained quiet when rain hit it, and blended in well with the darkened watchmen’s positions.  Roeland called them Elven Cloaks.

Doug entered the blanketed vestibule in the equipment shed, and found Arie, his daughter Elisabeth and son Hendrik gathered around the radios. Hendrik and Arie’s watch wrapped up at midnight, and it was not customary for them to be anywhere but in the watchmen’s positions until relieved.

“What’s going on?” Doug asked.

“There’s an ambush about to be sprung. We didn’t want to be in the middle of it,” Hendrik replied. Doug noted that neither of them was wet from the rain.

“What about patrol? Watch?”

“Not tonight. The Weerstand is close,” Arie said. “Hendrik, show him on the map,” Arie said, listening to one of the headsets. Doug thought he heard someone on the radio speaking Dutch.  

Hendrik motioned Doug to a large map of the farm, marked with a coordinate grid that would normally correspond to GPS coordinates for nearly automated farming. With the loss of the GPS system and most communications satellites, the map was a bit of a relic.

“The Weerstand put out some information that we were having some storage issues here—implying that we had supplies at risk because we didn’t have enough men,” Hendrik explained.

“A trap? Here?”

“Sure. Good reason too,” Hendrik continued. “They came up from the south, through these farms that pulled back defensive and patrol lines. This is a funnel that they had to pass through,” he said, showing three and a half miles of woods and streams through a well-defined drainage, leading toward the Des Moines River.

“How many men?”

“Enemy count is one hundred thirty, more or less. They have boats at the river and men there.  When action starts here, they’ll go down too,” Hendrik said.

“Where is the target? I mean, where do you spring it?”

“Half mile south. The Gunder cattle barn.  The red one,” Hendrik said.

“The Weerstand is there?” Doug asked.

“No, just south of that in force. There are a few men there, to make it look like a soft target. If it goes as planned, most of the enemy will never reach the barn.”

“Hendrik, why wasn’t I told about this?”

“We didn’t know where they’d be striking or when. If they had picked another night, you’d be out in the far post, looking at black rain. They picked tonight, so tonight it is.”

“Where did they come from?” Doug asked.

“We’re not sure. If we catch some alive, we might be able to find out.”

Doug heard Arie say something firmly, that sounded like ‘Aanvallen’.

“What did he say?” Doug asked.

“Dutch. ‘Attack’.”  Hendrik replied.

Elisabeth took off her headphones and flipped on the speakers for all to hear.  As Doug had been instructed in this eventuality, the men in the field at this point were in charge to direct the battle. There was nothing to do now but to listen and wait. Six frequencies on each of the radios and scanners competed for attention. The enemy conveniently had a single unencrypted frequency; the Weerstand had eleven that were encrypted, covering various parts of the route from the Des Moines to the Gunder barn.   The fighting was over within fifteen minutes.

“All right then. It is over for now,” Arie said. “Douglas, you may proceed to Wilde boom,” the ‘wild tree’.

Doug knew that even with a large raiding party being wiped out, there could be stragglers or lone attackers, waiting for advantage.

“Thomas will be at the spring house soon,” Hendrik said. “He’ll be covering that side. Kurt is down with a fever.”

“Anything serious?” Doug asked.

“Too soon to tell. He didn’t get the flu in the spring, so we’ll have to wait and see,” Hendrik said, handing Doug his radio and his pack. Doug tucked the thermos into a pocket.

“We talk tomorrow, Douglas. Ja?” Arie asked. “This news of yours. Interesting.”

“For what it didn’t say and for what it did.”

Arie nodded without speaking, looking at the map of the farm. “You sound as if you are surprised that your government is lying to you. Surely you are not that naïve, Douglas.” 

Distance, Chapter 49

49

Saturday morning,

September Second

4:04 a.m.

Doug had volunteered for the two to six a.m. watch, but had been overruled from perimeter watch until Roeland, Peter and Hendrik could train him on procedures and the lay of the land.  Instead, he was tasked with listening to overnight patrol reports from the main farm and seven other adjacent farms in the alliance.  Each had their own frequencies; each had their own base station monitoring all of the others as well as numerous other pre-programmed frequencies in the region. Between the seven farms, nearly a thousand frequencies were scanned, covering many of the active ham radio bands; police, fire and emergency services from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids, into Illinois and well into Missouri.  Should any trouble arise on any of the local farms everyone on watch would know about it immediately.  If one farm needed assistance, all other farms stood ready to send reinforcements, while still maintaining their own defenses.

The system had been set up after an attack on a distant relatives’ farm outside of Monona, in northeastern Iowa.  A similar setup with communications had been in place, and when the call went out for aid, nearly all of the watchmen and reserves responded. The three other farms were then hit with multiple attacks—the first had been diversionary to assess defenses and to pin down those defenders while brute force overwhelmed the rest of the farms, stripped of defenses as part of the mutual aid response.  The survivors estimated the attacking force at more than a hundred men. The attackers then retreated in an orderly manner into Wisconsin.

The seven farms in the Segher alliance though, were just one cell of many. Word of any attack from any direction on any of the rural properties would rapidly spread. Relationships built between neighbors over generations of farming and marriage and business created the quilt of common bond throughout the region. 

An old, stained map had been pinned to the corkboard above the bank of radios in the equipment shed, not far from where Doug’s Jeep was parked.  The map had been marked with a bright orange highlighter, identifying areas that were ‘claimed’ by the New Republic. Most of Illinois lay within their claim, and it was possible that the raiding party from Wisconsin was part of this new threat. There were few States that agreed with—in public—the New Republic Declaration of Independence, but reports on shortwave spread like wildfire.  Many of the Northeastern states were supporting—covertly—this New Republic organization.  Already, refugees from these states were beginning to move West, and running low on fuel well short of their destinations.

Family farm operations across the region were a fraction of pre-Collapse in size, but diversity had increased dramatically.  With many of the corporate farms lying fallow for lack of fuel, seed and fertilizer, the smaller subsistence farms were wrapping up their summer harvests. Temperatures over the average Labor Day weekend were normally in the high seventies or eighties, with lows in the fifties at night.  This year however, the highs barely hit seventy, and nighttime temperatures hovered around forty degrees. The Federal weather prediction system had no explanation for the cooler temperatures, and no meaningful outlook for the coming fall and winter.

Arie however, knew early in the year that something was dramatically different, and doubled the production of cool-weather crops, while tightly minding the inventories of grains for both human and animal use, buying or trading for more as the season went on.

The extended family had been canning and dehydrating food from early June on, filling the storerooms at the main farm, Catharina and Tom’s new home, Peter and Molly’s place, and the rest of the families storerooms.  Root crops would be coming out of the ground within the next few weeks, and would again be distributed to various root cellars of the family. Winter squash would be stored intact; pressure canned, and dehydrated, Doug learned from Julie. Doug had little doubt that the Segher clan would make it through the winter in good shape, missing little in the way of store-bought foods.

Jake Segher’s workbench held the pile of electronics retrieved from the police station, and several neatly organized stations where the electronics that were transmitting were opened up for inspection. After opening up the shortwave transceiver case, a trip wire of some kind attached to the case shorted out the transmitting feature of the modified radio, Jake discovered to his irritation. He removed the non-factory parts and placed them in their own little copper box.  Using what he’d learned from the shortwave transceiver, Jake carefully examined the cable television box before cracking the case open.  The cable box, Jake discovered, had an independent power supply, RFID chip, wi-fi transmitter, a video feed, and a substantial flash-memory storage card—none of it factory installed, and none of the technology had anything in common with the parts removed from the shortwave. Additionally the cable box additions were completely hidden under the main cable TV circuit board, out of view of casual inspection.

After dinner the previous evening, Jake and Doug talked about Jake’s discoveries, as Doug removed the United States Government stickers from the Jeep with a heat gun and a razor blade.  Doug concluded that the equipment was all put in by Regent.  Jake however, concluded that the cable gear was too sophisticated for a private sector corporation, unless it was engaged in industrial espionage in a hostile location. 

“Why would they monitor their own staff with such sophistication?” he asked Doug.

“Because they trust no one,” Doug replied.

“Nonsense. You’re proof that you’re wrong. If they didn’t trust you, you’d be dead in a ditch someplace or fed to the pigs.”

“Point made,” Doug said with no small amount of shock. “Let me clarify. I believe there are factions within Regent that don’t trust anyone—that use whatever means necessary to get leverage over others.”

“OK. That does make sense, but I’m still not buying it. I think this stuff is Big Brother,” Jake replied.  “One way or the other, you’ll probably find out soon enough.  I seriously doubt they’ll like having this equipment out in the wild all on its lonesome.”

“They’ll come for it?”

“Pretty good chance of it, once you get back to civilization, assuming they still have assets afield.”

“I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Doug said.  Jake looked at Doug with unblinking eyes.

“Doug, you ever shoot anyone?”

Doug flinched a little involuntarily. “Yeah, actually. Several.”

“OK. Advice: Do not, if confronted by someone that could be Fed, get in the way--especially for something like this.  Assuming you go on this road trip for the FDA next week, do yourself a favor and just leave this thing in the Jeep. If you see someone breaking in to get it, let ‘em have it. I have no idea what’s on that flash card, or if there’s anything of value at all. But I do know that once that thing is in proximity to any one of a number of innocent-looking pieces of hardware on any number of telephone poles, it will receive a query from Someone, Somewhere, and it will answer.”

“Telephone poles?” Doug asked.

“You ever see a grey box on a telephone pole? Or maybe a drum-shaped thing on a post along a road? Or just one of those green or tan phone junction boxes at the side of some road?”

“Yeah, of course,” Doug replied.

“Those don’t just provide convenient places to connect wire ‘A’ to wire ‘B’; they haven’t for many years.”

“Oh,” Doug said, feeling stupid. “I had no idea.”

“Nearly no one does,” Jake said chuckling.  “All this talk about the Government adding cameras and watching people and all that over the past couple of years just makes me laugh. They’ve known for forty years everything you’ve said on the phone, every page you load on the internet, anyone you talk to, anything you write. People are up in arms two generations too late.”

As the stars in the eastern sky began to fade with the coming dawn, Doug’s quiet contemplation was destroyed with bursts of radio traffic from radio transmissions in the east.

Eighty miles away, between Peoria and Galesburg, Illinois, a probable raiding party was spotted by a deputy sheriff.  Word was immediately broadcast in that area to adjacent properties and their respective protection cells. Moments after that, the radio transmissions were jammed with reports of attacks from Springfield, Illinois to Moline, just across the Mississippi from Davenport, Iowa.

Doug was monitoring two frequencies in that area, and getting reports from the six other base stations in the Segher group on the dozen or so frequencies they were listening to.  Nothing was happening nearby, but protocol called for Doug to provide warning to those on watch, from references in a book that he was not exactly well versed in. He referred to his cheat-sheet, instead.

“One Peter Five Eight.  Repeat, One Peter Five Eight,” Doug said quietly into the microphone.

“One Six One Eight,” was the singular reply a few moments later.

Doug’s warning referred to the Bible verse, ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’   The reply was from the book of Matthew chapter sixteen, verse eighteen, ‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’

The distance from the raiders to the Segher Farm and allied farms was not important at the moment.  All watchmen were on a heightened level of awareness for any potential raid from any direction. Should potential raiders be in the area, the watchmen would report back with the first part of Samuel, chapter seventeen, verse one, ‘Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle,’ at which point, Doug and the others manning the radios would relay for a general call-up of all armed men and women in the area.

The cheat sheet had a dozen numbers and their usage guidelines.  Doug would come to memorize them all.

The string of attacks in Illinois stayed on the east side of the Mississippi, but from what Doug could determine, there were at least twenty separate raids taking place simultaneously. It was impossible to tell though, how successful they were.

At the end of their shift, Doug gathered with Peter, Roeland and Hendrik, as the half-strength day shift, including Catharina’s husband Tom and his oldest, Colin, took up the rifles and fresh radios, and headed out to their observation posts.  Cath settled into the listener’s seat in front of the radios, and reviewed the notes that Doug had compiled. 

The many farms on the informal radio network had learned over the weeks and months that raiding parties had never attacked any farm in the few hours after sunrise. The admittedly-prejudiced consensus among many of the farm leaders was that the raiders were mostly city people, and it was just ‘too early’ for them.  As a result of these defined patterns, the Seghers and any of a hundred other farms reduced their guards and proceeded back to the business of farm operations in the early hours of the day. 

The clear, cold night had given way to increasing clouds moving in from the northwest and steady winds.  The four men coming off of the nightwatch all felt the first raindrops, softly at first, but steady by the time they reached the porch.

Doug ate a light breakfast without coffee, and planned to head to bed for a few minutes with Julie before she arose. Before he was able to leave the breakfast table though, Cath called to the house on one of the UHF radios used around the Farm.   Immediately it became clear that the ‘night raids’ weren’t following the predictable pattern. The ‘night shift’ hurried back to the equipment shed to get more information.

“What’s going on, Cath?” Roeland asked of his older sister as soon as they’d closed the door.

“Three more raids. Smaller attacking groups,” she replied, listening to the continuing reports while taking notes.

“Distance?” Peter asked.

“Salem. Hillsboro. Bonaparte,” Catharina replied.

Roeland explained the significance to Doug: Salem was less than ten miles from the Farm; Hillsboro eight miles; and Bonaparte a spare six miles away. They were too far from each other to be a single raiding party. All were small villages without permanent police presence.

“Size of the raiding parties?”  Hendrik asked.

“No more than a dozen. These are different though,” Cath said. “They’re taking people too, not just food or supplies.”

“What? Human trafficking?” Doug asked.

“They’re taking women,” Cath said flatly. “Use your imagination. Doug, would you take over these two?” she said, handing a slip of paper with two scanner ranges scrawled down. “I thought I heard another call, but it went dead before I could hear it. Then these came up.”

“Are all the other farms already on alert?” Hendrik asked.

“Yes,” Cath replied.

Doug picked up another headset and quickly set up the frequency ranges, and was instantly hit with the sound of gunfire. “Another one here,” Doug told them. “Not sure where yet.”

“Keep us informed. We’re going back out,” Peter said.  “Roel, aren’t you on duty today?” he asked, referring to Roeland’s deputy sheriff’s responsibilities.

“Not until noon. Twelve shift tonight,” he replied, meaning a twelve hour shift.

Doug waved to them to stop as he listened to the frantic voices.

“Charlie’s. They’re still at Charlie’s! We’ve got to get back across the bridge!” a very scared man yelled into the radio. Doug heard multiple rifles firing in the background.

“Too many! They’re flanking us!” another voice yelled.

“We’re coming. We’re on River Road one mile west,” a third voice said, trying to calm the first two.

“More on the River Road, half mile from the Eldon bridge,” a deep male voice reported, quietly. “Four vehicles. Two pickup trucks with men in the back, two light pickups with shooters in the back.”

“All right, that’s thirty plus,” another calm voice replied. “We can all see what they’ve got. Take out the drivers before they hit that bridge. First unit, push their dismounts from Seventh back to Ninth.  Second unit, push them back to the river. And get our people back.”

“They mentioned ‘Eldon’,” Doug said.  Hendrik walked up to the map and pointed to a river crossing and a small town, ten or twelve miles west and a little north of the Farm. He placed a red pin at that location, and at the towns that Cath had mentioned.

The radios went silent for a moment before several agonizing screams forced Doug to turn down the volume on what he’d determined to be the attackers’ radio frequency.  One of the attackers radios either had an open mic or he was activated by his voice.

“I’ve got both sides of this fight. Attackers and defenders!”  Doug flipped the speakers on both of the broadcasts. Catharina listened as well.

“Jesus, I’m hit! Someone help me! I…can’t breathe….” A man shrieked, before his voice transitioned to a wet, choking gurgle.

“Unit one, mop up on the west of the bridge,” one of the defending commanders directed.

“We’ve got dismounts fleeing to the south from the trucks. Pursue?”

“Wound them if they run and kill them if they shoot back, Unit Two,” the commander said with ice in his voice. “They’ve killed our people,” the man spat. “They killed them all.”

A few more minutes of gunfire was heard on the ‘attackers’ radio, with the panting of several men.

“Four prisoners,” one of the defenders said to his commander.

“Count of enemy dead,” the commander asked without inflection.

“Fourteen this side of the bridge.  Twenty six on the south side.”

“You find a leader?” the commander asked.

“Sorry sir, he took three rounds to the head.”

“Load them up and bring them all in,” was the reply. “Reserve Unit, police up the vehicles, weapons, ammunition and equipment.  Stage it as discussed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damned efficient,” Roeland said. “I’m not sure who that is but I’d like to find out.”

“We need to get out to our positions,” Hendrik said. “Cath, are your radios…” she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“Yes. Still going,” she said, not raising her head.

Arie, Maria and Julie entered the equipment shed as Hendrik reached for the door.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked. Doug stopped for a moment and smiled at her, thinking to himself just how lucky he was to have found her.  Hendrik filled them in as Roeland and Peter picked up two matching AR-15’s and vests.  The Farm had eight identical rifles of the type, along with load-bearing vests with extra magazines, a pocket for one of the small tactical radios, and a chest-mounted holster for a .45 caliber handgun. Other contents of each vest included a map of the area, a pocket for a small first aid kit, and a packet of beef jerky, dried fruit and nuts.   Other watch equipment was contained in a small pack that each watchman took out to their assigned observation point.

The frequencies that Doug had been monitoring went quiet as the minutes passed. He assumed that the defenders in Eldon had completed their work, and were tending to their wounded and dead.

“Father, we need to talk with the Weerstand,” Cath told Arie.

“Why, child? What do you find?” he replied.

“These attackers. They come from nowhere. They come from within. They are already among these places. They did not travel from the east or the south, they sprung up from within.”

“How do you know this?”

“There were no vehicles involved until the attacks were well underway.  They came in afoot. Only after they had attacked did the vehicles arrive. The vehicles were used for retreat—to take what they had stolen.”

“They did this where?” Arie asked as Maria looked on sternly.

“Salem, Hillsboro and Bonaparte,” Cath replied.

“And probably Eldon. Same pattern,” Doug added, realizing what Cath was saying. “They must be moving in at night, or only moving at night.”

“There is something I do not understand though,” Catharina said, making marks on a small folded map. “In Bonaparte and Hillsboro, the trucks. They left behind some of their people. They left them to fight for themselves.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Julie said. “You don’t leave your people behind.”

Doug wondered. “Unless those people don’t matter to you.”

“What?” Julie asked.

“Were those men worth less than what or who they took?” Doug asked.

No one replied for many seconds. Maria finally answered. “People don’t do that. You bring your people home.”

“You are applying your belief system to people that do not necessarily believe in the same things, Maria,” Doug said, before turning to Cath. “Cath, was there heavy fighting in those cases?”

“No. That is what I found disturbing. There was little fighting at the end.  They just drove off. The people in Hillsboro then hunted down the stragglers. The others in Bonaparte are still chasing them.”

“Why this? Why now?” Julie asked.

“Something bigger’s going on,” Doug answered.  “Maybe part of this New Republic business. I don’t know.”

“We call the Weerstand immediately. Catharina, make the call,” Arie said with resignation.  “We will meet today. Here, for luncheon.”

Maria nodded and tugged Julie along back to the house. “We’ve work to do, now.”

“Arie, what can the Weerstand do?” Doug asked.

“We go hunting, Douglas. We do not wait to be preyed upon. The fight will come to them, and we will bring it.”

Doug leaned back in the chair for a moment before responding, considering what Arie had just said.  “Arie, the men I met…”

“Are far more capable than they might appear,” Arie replied before Doug could finish. “Do not underestimate their abilities based on your eyes, for they deceive you.”

“The men I met are farmers. Business owners…”

“Yes. They fight for their homes, their wives and children and brothers and sisters. There are men in the Weerstand that have fought for the United States, but remember there are also men who have fought in South Africa to defend their farms, and lost family and property and generations of heritage and ended up leaving that place. In the words of one, this is but a tactical challenge that can be met, matched, and defeated. Come now. There is much work to do,” Arie said, turning to the door.

“Cath, are you OK on the radios now?” Doug asked.

“Yes. Elisabeth will be here soon. She can help if things get busy.” 

“Catharina, please provide estimates on the locations of these raiders and where you think they’re heading, ja?”

“Yes, papa. Soon now.”

Doug and Arie walked on the brick pathway to the house as the rain picked up. “You good with a rifle, Douglas?”

“I’d regard myself as ‘adequate’. No more than that.”

“Jacob will spend some time with you in the small barn. He can hone your skills, ja?”

“That would be a good idea.”

“’Time grows short, along with our days’, my father once told me,” Arie said as they reached the house. “We must make good of them.”