“What are the Grange ladies serving up for lunch?” Ryan asked.
“Dunno, man,” Pow said, “but I hope it’s those deer burgers. And, damn, that potato salad. Hey, Cindy, you had that potato salad?”
She nodded. “It’s good,” she added. She was relaxing a little. She hadn’t slept the night before worrying about going into town. Not just about danger to herself, but about seeing all the horrible things going on in town. She wasn’t sure she was prepared for it.
Just before they got to the gate, Cindy asked, “Did you guys bring money? How are we paying for these?”
Rich pointed toward the back of the truck and said, “We have something much better than money. You’ll see.” Rich realized that they hadn’t told Cindy the plan yet so it was no wonder she was nervous. Just going to town without money would be a scary thing.
“We have some valuables to trade for the medical supplies,” Rich said, pointing toward the back of the truck. “Then we’ll meet someone who will, shall we say, cut the red tape for us and take us to someone who has medical supplies for sale. Don’t worry. We have this thing well planned.”
Cindy relaxed some more. She thought Rich had done plenty of things right in the past and seemed to know what he was doing. She was reassured they had a plan and something to trade for the medical supplies.
Rich got on the CB. “Bennington, leaving now. See you at the rendezvous in about five minutes.” Pow’s and Ryan’s CB’s echoed with this. They were all on the same channel. Of course.
“OK. See you soon,” the other voice, which must be Bennington, said.
Rich’s truck came up to the gate. Ryan made sure the towels were over the packages. The guards seemed puzzled when the guys and Cindy didn’t get out of the truck to be at the guard station. Were they going into town?
“Gotta do some errands,” Rich said with a smile to Dan, who knew the plan. Dan shouted, “Let them through.” The steel-pole gate swung open and out they went. It was scary to be leaving the safety of Pierce Point. The guys were mildly scared, but wouldn’t admit it. Cindy was terrified, but was trying to calm herself down.
They went across the bridge and turned down the road to Frederickson. Rich, trying to ease the tension, looked at his gas gauge and said, “Full tank.” He had been getting fuel donated to him from various neighbors with gallon gas cans of gas siphoned from vehicles they no longer drove. Cindy nodded. One less thing to worry about, she thought.
She finally admitted it to herself. It wasn’t getting shot or even dying that she worried about. It was getting raped. That word was so ugly. She hated to even think it, so she didn’t. She thought about getting caught by a group of men, but then her thinking cut off and went back to the beginning when she got caught. She could never complete the thought about what would happen after getting caught. She couldn’t. She was starting to grip the clipboard hard. Rich could tell she was really scared.
Rich gently put his hand on the clipboard and said, “We’re all scared, but we’ll be fine. I do this kind of thing for a living. I’ve come home every time.” He looked away from the road and directly at her and said, “You have three extremely good gunfighters working for you. We’re way better than any of the punks in town. Seriously. We know what we’re doing. We have a plan and, as you’ll see, help from ‘friends.’ We’re good at this, just like you’re good at nursing.” He wanted to change her thinking from guns to nursing, which was, after all, why they were going into town. Well, the medical supplies were one of the two reasons they were going into town.
About a mile after the Pierce Point gate, Rich slowed down before a gas station. It had a sign up that said, “NO GAS” and looked like it had been looted. There was a police car there.
Cindy was alarmed. The men in the truck had guns that were illegal—especially those Army-looking guns—and now they were letting the police see them?
“Part of the plan,” Rich said with a smile. “You’ll see.” Even though Cindy was about to see what was going on, Rich had secrecy so drilled into him that he didn’t want to tell her even a minute in advance. That made no sense, but it was how he was.
Rich said to the guys in the back, “Rendezvous. Keep your eyes open for more than one guy, though.” Rich didn’t want his cargo to get stolen. He basically trusted Bennington, but he couldn’t be too sure in this climate. In many ways, this rendezvous was the most dangerous part of the trip into town.
Pow and Ryan scanned. There was no one around, unless the bad guys had snipers on the roof of the gas station, and the shot angle wouldn’t work too well if they did. Rich saw that there was apparently only one cop in the car. Good.
He pulled up alongside the police car. The cop waved. Rich said, “Mornin’ John.” Rich tapped on the back window.
Pow and Ryan jumped out and started sweeping the area with their ARs. They looked extremely professional and intimidating. Good.
This startled Bennington, but he realized that they had every right to be taking security precautions. He acted like it was no big deal even though it was jarring.
Rich said to Cindy, “Stay in here. We’ll be back in a minute.” She nodded. She had the feeling that this was actually all well planned. She didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but she knew it was well planned. That alone was comforting.
Rich got out of his truck and came over to the cop car door and Bennington got out.
Rich shook his hand and smiled. “Nice to see you again, John.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Bennington said.
Rich walked to the back of the truck and lifted up the towels. “Well, John, just like we talked about on the radio last night,” Rich smiled, “it seems that I have two AR-15s, ten magazines, and a full case of 5.56 to ‘turn in’ to the authorities. All those items being illegal and all, I wanted to do my civic duty and get them to you for safekeeping.”
Bennington wasn’t thinking this was as funny as Rich was. Bennington was actually ashamed of what he was doing. It wasn’t funny to Bennington.
Bennington said curtly, “Yeah, thanks.” He opened the AR boxes and looked at the guns. He counted the magazines and tested one of them by pushing in on the follower. It seemed to work. Everything seemed to be in order.
“OK,” Bennington said to Rich, “help me put these in my trunk.” Bennington was looking around, not for attackers, but for anyone to see him doing something so dirty. Taking a bribe. Kind of. And doing his job. Kind of.
Rich started to help Bennington put the cargo into the trunk. Pow and Ryan were scanning the area from cover. Bennington looked over at them and said to Rich, “How many of these kind of guys you got in Pierce Point?”
Rich would be an idiot to give an accurate answer. So, instead, he said, “Oh, several squads.” He intentionally used a military term like “squad,” implying that the fighters at Pierce Point had some military structure.
“What?” Bennington asked, completely surprised.
“Oh, yeah,” Rich said very convincingly, “Ryan, there,” he said pointing at Ryan, “just came back from Afghanistan. A bunch of his Marine buddies were out of work. So a couple weeks ago they came to live with him. I don’t even know how many, but there’s dozens. They talk about a ‘Squad Five’ so I guess there’s five squads and that’s, what, fifty men?” Rich was loving this. He made a mental note to do some CB chatter back when he was at Pierce Point saying things like “Squad Three Leader, this is Squad Five Leader” to make the charade a little more real. They would assign a person to be a specific “squad leader” so there would be a consistent voice associated with that title. There was a good chance he didn’t need to do that because the cops probably weren’t listening to the CBs, but it was easy enough to throw a few of those “squad” references in every once in a while. They would also use fake squad references on the ham frequencies since the FC might be listening to that.