“They have some insider information,” Jake said.
“Who are they?” asked Meghan, who was now standing next to Laura immediately behind Jake.
“Some hippies that live in SLO,” Laura said. “We’re not sure what they’re doing here, but they’re the only ones.”
“I’ve seen that van around town for years,” Meghan said. “The people that drive it hang out near the campus a lot and sometimes hand out pamphlets to the students.”
“What kind of pamphlets?” asked Elsa’s voice from the speaker.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never took one from them. I avoid pamphlet people as a matter of course.”
“A wise philosophy,” Jake said. “Anyway, they knew exactly where to stop before the gate camera picked them up. I’m thinking they don’t know about the approach camera though.”
“It would seem they don’t,” Elsa agreed.
The doors opened on the microbus. Two figures got out. They were shades of green and white on the night vision view but they were plainly the hippie couple that everyone had seen around town. The male had a full beard and long hair tied back in a ponytail. The female was short, skinny, and her long hair was unkempt and flowing around her shoulders. They met at the front of the van and held a short conversation with each other. There was then a flare of white that momentarily overwhelmed the camera. When it cleared, Jake saw that the male had turned on a flashlight. He was shining it back and forth in the direction of the gate and the intercom box that sat before it.
“This is very suspicious behavior, Jake,” Elsa commented.
“Isn’t it?” Jake replied.
“Should we call the cops now?” asked Meghan.
“Not just yet,” Jake said. “They are barely on our property and still on the good side of the fence. Let’s see what they do.”
They continued to watch. The man left the flashlight on and the two of them walked over to the sliding door on the right side of the vehicle. The female opened it up and the male shined the flashlight inside. He then tucked the light between his arm and his chest and reached inside. He pulled out what appeared to be a frame of some sort that had been constructed out of PVC pipe. It was rectangular in shape, about four feet wide by six feet tall. He carried it over and set it down about four feet in front of the microbus, the legs sitting on the pavement of the access road. Once it was in place, he walked back to the sliding door and pulled out another object constructed from PVC pipe. This one looked like the goalpost on an American football field. The center bar was about three feet tall. The crossbar was maybe two and a half feet. The uprights were another three feet. Attached to the very top of both uprights was some kind of loose, dangling thing.
“What the hell is this shit?” Jake asked.
“It looks like a big slingshot,” Laura said.
“A slingshot?” asked Meghan, as if she had never heard of such a thing.
“Yeah,” Laura said. “My brother used to have one when we were kids. He was pretty good with it. Could put a hole in a soda can from twenty feet, easy.”
“That’s a big fuckin’ slingshot if that’s what it is,” Jake observed.
“I really don’t like the looks of this, Jake,” Elsa said.
“This is very odd behavior,” Jake had to agree.
The man carried the goalpost over to the frame he had just set down. He put the center bar into a receptacle on the top of the frame. It seated neatly. They could see that the goalpost was now angled backward at about twenty degrees or so. The suspicion that this was a slingshot began to grow. This suspicion was reinforced when the man went back to the sliding door, reached inside, and pulled out a large plastic garbage bag, which he then dragged over and parked next to the base of the frame.
“This is getting creepier by the second,” Meghan said.
“Yes it is,” Laura agreed.
The couple had another conversation and then the man shined the flashlight down at the base of the frame. The woman then sat down on the base, putting her skinny butt on the lowest of the front cross supports and then sliding backwards, so she was entirely inside the frame and grasping the vertical bars with her arms.
“What is she doing?” Meghan asked.
“Stabilizing it,” Jake said. “She’s using her weight to keep it from tipping or moving when he slings whatever he is going to sling with it.”
“They are going to launch something over the fence, Jake,” Elsa said with alarm. “What if it is Molotov cocktails?”
“That would be a bit antisocial,” Jake said, “but it wouldn’t hurt us. No way they can reach the house from there. It’s almost a quarter mile and uphill. And the trees and the grass are wet from the rain we had the other day.”
“But still...” Elsa started.
“He’s reaching in the bag,” Laura said.
And, sure enough, the man was reaching in the bag. He pulled something out. It was vaguely egg shaped, light in color, about the size of two fists clenched together. He reached up and grabbed the dangling device mounted between the two uprights. There was a piece of canvas or similar material there and he put the white object inside of it. He then stepped backwards, pulling on the canvas as he went. The material attached to the uprights proved to be large, elastic rubber bands or perhaps industrial bungee cords. It really was a slingshot. He stretched it out perhaps five feet, straining against the pull, and then let fly. The white object shot out of the canvas and rapidly flew out of the camera view. Jake looked at the screen that showed the view from the camera mounted just at the house end of the access road. The white object appeared in that view, traveling in a ballistic arc. It did not trigger the motion detector, which in turn would have activated the security lights, since the motion detectors were programed to disregard small flying objects to keep them from being constantly triggered by the sea birds and the crows that hung out on the cliff. The white object landed on the access road about thirty feet beyond the gate. It bounced twice and then rolled to a stop. It did not ignite, explode, or do anything else but lay there.
The man and the woman were now clearly laughing. They high-fived each other. The man then reached into the bag and pulled out another white, oval-shaped object. He seated it in the sling of the slingshot and fired it off as well. It landed a little shorter than the first one, but remained in the roadway. He then reached in the bag and pulled out yet another.
“All right,” Jake said. “I’ve seen enough of this shit. I’m calling the cops now.”
“Thank you,” Elsa said gratefully.
“I’ll have to hang up on you, Elsa,” he said.
“That’s okay,” she said. “Call me back when they are on the way.”
“Will do,” Jake said. He disconnected Elsa and then picked up the handset and put it to his ear. He pushed one of the buttons on the phone. It was preprogrammed with the number for the sheriff’s department dispatch center. The phone was answered on the third ring by a pleasant female voice.
“San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s department,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“Hi,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Kingsley and I live here at 13227 Pacific Coast Highway outside Oceano.”
“Okay,” the dispatcher said. “I have your address on my screen, Mr. Kingsley. Do you need the sheriff’s department to respond out to you?”
“Yes, I do,” Jake said. “You see, I’ve got these two people who pulled up to my gate in a VW microbus. They then assembled a large slingshot and are using it to launch unknown objects over my gate and onto my property.”
“Unknown objects?” the dispatcher asked. “What exactly are they?”
“I don’t know what they are,” Jake said patiently. “That is why I used the word ‘unknown’. They are small, whitish things that are egg shaped to some degree. When they land on the road they do not explode or burn or anything else, but these people have a large lawn and garden bag full of such objects and seem to have every intention of launching them all.”