CHAPTER
40
THE MAN STEPPED OUT OF the cabin.
Roy West was around forty, a wick under six feet, and a sturdy two hundred pounds. His fingers were long and leathery, his face the same. A mustache and beard covered his lip and jaw respectively. He had on Army combat boots, jeans tucked into them, a flannel shirt, and a corduroy vest with built-in shotgun shell holders.
He drew a remote from his pocket and hit the button. The laser trip field powered down and disappeared. He had parked his Jeep in a spot that the laser field would not intersect.
From her hiding place Reel watched him approach the vehicle, following every step he took. She had been right, the place was booby-trapped. West was carefully pacing out a zigzag path to the Jeep.
As he touched the door of the vehicle Reel said, “We need to talk, Roy.”
He whirled, the gun appearing in his hand seemingly from thin air.
The MP5 fired on full auto before he could point his pistol at her. The rear door of the Jeep was shredded by the barrage, which pierced the metal and tore up the inside of the vehicle.
West threw himself on the hood of the Jeep.
“Next burst goes into you,” said Reel. “Gun, down. Now. Not asking again.”
West dropped the gun.
“Turn to me, hands over head, fingers laced. Eyes down. You look up, a bullet goes into your right eye.”
He turned, his fingers wrapped around his head, his gaze down.
“What do you want?” he said, his voice shaky.
“Walk over here. Just don’t trip on an IED.”
He looked startled at this comment, but walked toward her, clearing the minefield and stopping two feet from her.
“Can I look up?”
“No. Get on the ground, facedown, arms and legs spread.”
He complied.
She stood within a foot of him but still behind cover.
“I’ve got a guy in the cabin with a rifle trained on you,” he said.
“Don’t think so.”
“You can’t take that chance.”
“Yes I can. I’m standing behind a tree. And if your ‘guy’ didn’t show himself after my bullet barrage, he’s a chickenshit and not worth my time worrying about.”
“Who the hell are you and what do you want?”
“Who I am is irrelevant. What I want to know is this.” She pulled a sheaf of papers from her duster and tossed them in the dirt next to him.
“Can I look at it without you shooting me?” he asked.
“Just move your arms very, very slowly.”
He did so and gripped the pages. He pulled them close and read down the first page.
“So what?”
“You wrote it?” she asked.
“What if I did?”
“Why?”
“It was my job. My old job.”
“I checked into your new job. You run your own militia.”
West snorted. “We’re not a militia. We’re freedom fighters.”
“Who are you fighting for freedom from?”
“If you have to ask you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
Reel frowned. “The big bad government? You live in the middle of nowhere. You have your guns. You’ve got your own place. You’re off the grid. No one’s bothering you that I can see. So what’s the problem?”
“It’s only a matter of time before they come for us. And believe me, we’ll be ready.”
“You know what your paper said. Do you believe it?”
“Of course.”
“You think it could actually happen?” she asked.
“I know it could. Because we’re so lackadaisical about security. Only they didn’t have the balls in D.C. to admit that. It seemed to me that the higher-ups wanted the assholes to attack us. One of the reasons I quit. I was disgusted.”
“So you think this is the path to a peaceful future?”
“I never said a peaceful future was the goal. Our having a future is the goal. You lead by force. You kick the shit out of them. You don’t just sit around and wait for them to attack you. Clusters of powder, we called them. They think security is impenetrable. Well, my paper showed them how impenetrable it was. It was bullshit.”
“So you were tasked to do doomsday scenarios?” asked Reel.
“We had a whole office doing nothing but. Most of the others did the same old crap. Nothing outside the box. They were worried about ruffling feathers. Not me. You give me a job, I do it. I don’t give a shit about consequences.”
“Who did you submit the white paper to?”
“That’s classified,” retorted West.
“You’re not with the government anymore,” countered Reel.
“Still classified.”
“I thought the government was the enemy.”
“Right now, you’re the enemy. And if you think you’re going to get away from here alive, you’re beyond stupid.”
“You the law out here? You and your freedom fighters?”
“Pretty much. Why do you think I moved here?”
“Who did you submit it to?” she asked again.
“What are you going to do, torture me?” he sneered.
“I don’t have time to torture you. Although you would find it memorable. If you don’t tell me I’ll just shoot you.”
“In cold blood,” he scoffed. “You’re a woman.”
“That should tell you all you need to know to be afraid.”
West laughed. “You think a lot of your gender, don’t you?”
“You were a desk jockey your whole career. You never fired a shot and never had a shot fired at you. The closest you ever got to danger was watching the video feed from a thousand miles away. Did that make you feel like a real man instead of the ball-less punk you really are?”
He started to jump up, but Reel placed a round an inch from his right ear, so close that bits of the hard dirt kicked up and struck his ear, which started bleeding.
He screamed, “You stupid bitch, you shot me!”
“Dirt, not metal. You’d feel the difference. Now spread your legs wider.”
“What?”
“Spread your legs wider.”
“Why?”
“Do it or I promise dirt will not be the next thing you feel.”
West spread his legs wider.
Reel moved behind him and lined up her shot with her Glock.
“What the hell are you doing?” he cried out, panicked.
“Which testicle do you want to keep? But I have to tell you, at this angle, there’s no guarantee I won’t nail both of them with the one shot.”
He immediately snapped his legs together.
“Then you’ll get it right up the ass,” she said. “I don’t think it’ll feel any better.”
“Why the hell are you doing this?” he screamed.
“It’s pretty simple. I asked for a name. You didn’t give me one.”
“I didn’t officially submit it to anyone.”
“Unofficially, then,” said Reel.
“What does it matter?”
“Because it seems that some folks took you at your word and are going to try to do it.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sound so happy. It’s insane. Now the name. I won’t ask again.”
“It was only a code name,” said West.
“Bullshit.”
“I swear to God.”
“Why submit unofficially to a code name? And your answer better make sense or you’re going to need a new way to evacuate your bowels.”
“The person came to me.”
“What person?” she asked.
“I meant electronically they came to me. They somehow found out I had written a comprehensive, groundbreaking scenario. It was vindication.”
It disgusted Reel to see how animated he suddenly was in talking about his “accomplishments.”
“When did this happen?”
“About two years ago.” He added, “Are they really doing it? I mean who?”
“What was the code name?”
He didn’t answer.
“You have one second. Now!”
“Roger the Dodger,” he shouted.
“And why submit to Roger the Dodger?” she asked calmly, keeping her finger on the Glock’s trigger guard.
“His electronic signature showed he had top-top-secret clearance and was at least three levels above me. He wanted to know what I had come up with. He said the scuttlebutt was my plan was revolutionary.”
“How would he have known that if you hadn’t even submitted it to anyone yet?”
The man hesitated and said sheepishly, “Maybe I talked a bit about it at the bar we would go to for drinks after work.”
“No wonder the government kicked your ass out. You’re an idiot.”
“I would have quit anyway,” he snapped.
“Right. To come to a little cabin in the middle of this craphole.”
“This is real America, bitch!”
“Your doomsday paper was pretty specific.”
He said proudly, “Country by country, leader by leader, step by step. It was all in the timing. It was a perfect jigsaw puzzle. I spent two years figuring it out. Every contingency. Everything that could go wrong. Everything was accounted for.”
“Not everything.”
“That’s impossible,” he snapped.
“You didn’t account for me.”
Reel heard the noises before he did. But when he did he smiled.
“Your time is up, little lady.”
“I’m not little. And I’ve never been a lady.”
Her boot came down on the back of his head, bouncing it off the hard dirt and knocking him out cold. She grabbed the pages and stuffed them back into her duster.
Reel retraced West’s safe path to the cabin and gave it the quick once-over. There were stacks of weapons, ammo, grenades, packs of C-4, Semtex, and other plastic explosives. Through a window looking out on the back porch she saw fifty-gallon drums of what looked to be gasoline and maybe fertilizer. She doubted they were for the generator or to grow crops. She figured the barn was probably full of those containers as well.
She also glimpsed detailed plans of attack on major cities in the United States. These folks were domestic terrorists of the worst kind. She grabbed anything that looked like it might be important, including a USB stick plugged into his laptop, and stuffed them in her coat pockets.
She also snagged a couple grenades. A “lady” could never have too many grenades.
She ran back out, raced over to his Jeep, threw open the rear door, and pulled out the scoped rifle and a box of ammo in the cargo pad.
She hustled back to her Explorer, jumped in, and peeled out. But before she got to the main road, she realized it was too late. When she saw what was coming at her, she had no option other than turning around and heading back toward the cabin.
It looked like a few precious seconds were going to end up costing Reel her life.