Some of the people from Pow’s neighborhood went to the stores on their own, without the escort Pow and Clay had organized. Most would bring a handgun with them.
It was amazing how many guns were coming out of the woodwork. Old .38 Specials and grandpa’s .45 from the war were being dusted off from sock drawers and being tucked into belts. People were carrying guns even if they didn’t have a concealed weapons permit. That law now seemed a quaint little rule from the past. Now, with what was going on, requiring a concealed weapons permit seemed like requiring a permit to breathe.
Some people in Pow’s neighborhood went to the store without a gun the day before. It didn’t turn out so well for two of them, an older man and wife, the Terrytons. They were robbed on their way there. Some young thugs in a pickup truck pulled up beside them at the intersection, jumped out, and forced their way into the Terrytons’ car. The thugs pulled the Terrytons out of their car, beat them, took their money and jewelry, and stole their car. This happened in broad daylight. The Terrytons were beaten unconscious and laying in the intersection for a while until some people pulled them onto the sidewalk. A bystander tried to perform first aid, but there were no ambulances or police cars. After a while, the bystander had to get to the store herself before it got dark, so she reluctantly left them there. The Terrytons died on a sidewalk as several hundred people drove by.
Chapter 66
Bugging Out of the Cedars
(May 7)
It was mid-afternoon. Pow was taking a break at his house after escorting two single moms on their trip to the grocery store. He was so tired; it was exhausting constantly being on guard. It was a different kind of tired than just staying up late. It was draining.
His cell phone vibrated. It was a text from a number he didn’t recognize. It said: “Grant’s wife here. We want to go. Can you still take us? Please. Urgent.”
Pow jumped up and yelled. Awesome. The Team could do their best deed yet: delivering Grant’s family to him. And having a great place out in the country to stay and continue their sheepdogging. And they would be out of the city where things were breaking down by the hour.
Pow tried calling Lisa. The call went through, although voice service had become more and more spotty. A woman answered.
“Mrs. Matson, this is Bill Kung here,” Pow said.
“Are you coming for us?” Lisa asked. She sounded desperate.
“Yes, ma’am,” Pow said. “That’s the plan. I need to know when you’ll be ready.”
“It will take a few hours,” Lisa said, “I have to make sure the kids have all their stuff.” Lisa had the packing list down from years of getting ready for vacations. That’s what this would be, she told herself. A week or two away from the house and then things would be normal. Except that thing about Grant being a terrorist. That would get cleared up. He was a lawyer. He’d tell a judge he wasn’t a terrorist and things would work out.
Pow looked at his watch. It was 2:45 p.m. It would be dark in six hours. It was May and sunset was very late in Washington State. He didn’t want to go out at night, which was when the bad guys were starting to come out in full force. They slept during the day.
“Could you be ready in two hours?” Pow asked. The Team was already at his house with all their stuff. In fact, they were fully packed and ready to go. Full magazines and full gas tanks. They were just waiting for this call. They could be ready to roll out in no time.
“Oh, I could,” Lisa said. “But my parents need to come, too. It will take them longer.”
Parents? What?
“Do they live around here?” Pow asked. They better, he thought. He wasn’t going into Seattle for anything.
“Yeah, they’re about two miles from me,” Lisa said. “I couldn’t go without them.”
Mission creep. That’s the term for when a mission starts to expand beyond what made sense in the first place. Pow could see this was happening to the relatively simple job of picking up Grant’s family and going out to the cabin. But he knew that things weren’t so bad that waiting a little while longer and taking more people out to the cabin was a life-and-death situation.
“Where, exactly, do they live?” he asked.
Lisa told him. It was a good neighborhood so it should be fairly safe. Probably.
“OK,” Pow said. He’d been helping people for days now. No reason to stop doing it now. “When can they be ready?”
“I’d say three hours,” she said, which was a complete guess because she hadn’t even talked to them about coming. She wanted to see if the Korean cop could still escort them out there before she brought up the topic of leaving with her parents.
“OK,” Pow said. “They need to be ready, absolutely ready, to go at 6:00. I’ll be at your house at 5:30. I’m bringing three other trucks of guys so we need to go right then. No waiting around.”
Three trucks of guys? Lisa had only met one guy, the cop who came to her door.
“Who will be in the three trucks and who are the guys?” Lisa asked.
“The Team,” Pow said proudly. “We have been training with Grant for over a year. These guys, Wes, Scotty, and Bobby, are like me. We’re very well armed. Grant told me last summer that we could come out to the cabin if the shit hit the…if things got dangerous in town. He said that having us out there was part of his plan, so that you and the kids would be ‘well taken care of.’ He said we could stay at one of the cabins out there, the yellow one owned by the guy from California.”
Lisa decided that she needed to test this claim that Grant had taken this man out to the cabin and wanted them to come out. She didn’t want to get into a truck with someone who wasn’t helping Grant. “Describe the cabin to me,” she said.
Pow described it perfectly, including the neighbors. “Their names begin with a ‘C’ and an ‘M.’” The Colsons and the Morrells, Lisa thought.
Well, his description of the place and the names of the neighbors were right, she thought. Grant had texted her from Manda’s phone and said she should go out to the cabin with the Pow guy, who was apparently a cop. Plus the Korean man used that same phrase Grant had, that they would be “well taken care of.” So these guys must be part of Grant’s plan.
Wow, Lisa thought. Grant had thought of everything and done all this behind her back. At first she was mad that he done all this secretly. Then she realized how lucky she was to have a husband who did all this. And how lucky she was to have a guy on the phone who was willing to risk his life and his friends’ to take her and her family to safety. This was all too incredible to believe. But so was having Nancy Ringman hurting Cole. And all those sirens she had been hearing for days that were now quiet. And the men with guns at the neighborhood entrance. And now getting picked up by some armed strangers Grant had been “training” with.
But this was real, Lisa thought. Yes, this was happening. They needed to get out of here. Nancy Ringman’s attack on them had made that obvious. OK, Lisa thought, it’s time to get practical and get to safety.
“I’ll be driving my Tahoe,” Lisa said. “That will work, right?”
“Sure,” Pow said. “You’ll need something to take your things in. My guys have all their stuff in their rigs so we don’t have much extra room. Besides, you’ll want to have your car when things get better in a few days and you can drive back home,” Pow said, knowing that things wouldn’t get better that quickly, but wanting to make her think otherwise. “We will put your car in the middle of the convoy. You’ll have some firepower in front of you and behind you. You’ll be very safe.”