Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (22 page)

Luke nodded. “Washington’s right. If we want good intel, we’re going to have to talk to one of those civilian ‘volunteers.’”

“And how the hell we gonna do that?” Butler asked.

Luke checked his watch. “It’ll be midnight or maybe a bit later before they change shifts at the terminal and figure out anything is wrong. We’ve got the night-vision gear we kept from the armory, so I say we wait until after dark and grab one of the civilians. It won’t be full dark until nine or a little after, but if we grab him at ten, we can be almost back to Fort Box by midnight.”

“Kidnap him? Are you nuts, Kinsey?” Butler asked.

“Think about it. It’s probably our only shot at finding out what they’re up to. I mean, do those people behind the wire look happy to you?”

Butler shook his head. “No. Of course not. But if we go around friggin’ kidnapping people, how does that make us any better?”

Luke grinned. “Because we’re the good guys.” Washington grinned too and Luke continued. “Look, we keep him blindfolded until we get to Fort Box and make sure he doesn’t see anything while he’s there. We question him, learn what we can learn, and give him the choice of staying or coming back here. If he wants to come back, we just blindfold him and bring him partway down the river, then put him in a small boat and let him make his own way back here. No harm. No foul.”

Butler shook his head. “All right. I guess it will work. But how did an honest Coastie end up running around with a couple of criminals like you.”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Luke said, and Washington grinned.

***

The sun set around eight, and thirty minutes later they heard the whine of an electric starter as a generator rumbled to life somewhere on the other side of the concentration camp. The reason became apparent as the searchlights on all four corner guard towers winked to life. Luke felt a momentary concern until it became clear the lights were focused on the camp, sweeping over the tents and playing over the fence lines. One by one, lights came on inside the tents, glowing through the fabric and setting shadows dancing on the tent walls. Individual lights bobbed through the gathering darkness here and there as people walked with flashlights, but there was no general outside lighting. Better and better, Luke thought.

They passed the time talking quietly, waiting for ten o’clock. Like the tents in the concentration camp, the tents outside the wire seemed to be shared facilities, which meant they had to catch a civilian alone, outside the tents.

Their ‘collection point’ was obvious, a row of portable toilets serving, but set some distance away from, the row of civilian tents.

At nine o’clock, lights began to wink off inside the tents, and Luke’s concern grew. What if the bastards all went to sleep before ten? They couldn’t hang around indefinitely, waiting for someone to wake up and come out to make a piss call. Fewer and fewer flashlights were bobbing between the tents or back and forth between the portable toilets. Then all the tents were dark except two. Then one.

Luke glanced up at the sky still dimly lit on the far western horizon. Close enough.

“Come on,” he said, folding down his night-vision goggles as his two companions followed suit.

He led them in a crouching run over the open field to the row of toilets a hundred yards away. Since they couldn’t know which toilet their quarry would choose, the plan was to wait until the man selected his toilet, then creep up behind the unit and grab him as he exited.

Washington was by far the strongest of the three, and by consensus, he was to grab the victim and clamp a hand over his mouth while Luke shoved a gun in the man’s face to convince him not to struggle. Butler was to quickly duct-tape his mouth and zip-tie his hands before they hustled their captive back to the tree line and the boat beyond. It was going to go like clockwork.

Except it didn’t.

They waited impatiently, staring at the last lighted tent, willing someone to come out and come their way. They heard voices through the still air, audible in the distance.

“Dempsey, will you put that book away and turn off the friggin’ light! You know what time we have to get up in the morning.”

“All right, all right. Keep your shirt on, Goodman. I’m gonna go take a piss and then I’ll turn the light out.”

Relieved, Luke saw the beam of the flashlight bobbing toward them. The first hint of trouble came when the bobbing flashlight got halfway to them, then stopped.

What the hell
? Luke watched in his night-vision goggles as their mark shoved the flashlight under his arm and fumbled with his fly. He wasn’t coming to the toilets. He was just going to take a leak on the ground.

Plan B. Luke got up and started running, circling wide off the gravel path so the grass muffled his footsteps as he approached the man from the rear. Twenty feet from the man, he had to step back on the path, and gravel crunched underfoot. Startled, the man whirled, and Luke’s world went supernova as the piercing beam of the halogen flashlight hit him full in the night-vision goggles. Too late, he flipped up the goggles and closed his eyes.

He heard gravel crunch as the man backed away from him. “What the hell—”

The question was cut off with an emphatic
oomph
, and Luke felt a strong hand on his upper arm and heard Butler whispering in his ear.

“Washington cold-cocked him. Looks like he’s down for the count, but be quiet. His buddy’s moving around in the tent. I can see the shadows on the tent wall.”

“Dempsey? What the hell you doing out there, talking to yourself? Come on, man. Get a frigging move on. I want to go to bed,” came the voice from the tent.

They all kept their positions frozen in place, unsure what to do.

“Dempsey, God dammit! Answer me, you turd.”

Butler whispered in Luke’s ear again. “Get ready to run if this doesn’t work out. I’ll hold your arm to keep you from running into anything. Just follow my lead and run like hell.”

Luke whispered back, confused, “If what doesn’t—”

Butler called toward the tent, “Gotta take a dump. You can turn out the light. I got my flashlight.”

“You catching a cold, Dempsey? You sound like hell. And you better not give it to me, you asshole.”

“Screw you, Goodman,” Butler called.

There was a muffled curse, and the light blinked off in the tent. Luke’s sight was mostly recovered, and he flipped down his night-vision goggles to find Washington zip-tying their victim’s hands. The man was out cold, and there was already duct tape across his mouth.
I hope like hell he’s still alive
, Luke thought.

Luke helped Butler, and they split up Washington’s gear so the big man could carry the prisoner. Washington reached down and picked up their prisoner effortlessly, throwing him over his shoulder as they all set off for the boat.

Chapter Twelve

Intracoastal Waterway/Calcasieu River

East End of Calcasieu Lock

Lake Charles, Louisiana

One Day Earlier

Day 28, 2:45 p.m.

“That’s a lotta gear, Lucius,” Dave Hitchcock said, staring at the massive pile of boxes and assorted loose gear heaped on the deck of the
Miss Martha
.

Lucius Wellesley nodded. “And there’s a pile that big or bigger on every one of the boats on this side. It’s gonna be a bear to ferry it all to the lock wall in the skiffs then haul it all the way to the other end of the dock, then down the other end of the lock wall and back into more skiffs to spread it out among our boats.” He sighed. “But I can’t bring myself to leave it. We ain’t likely to see any more spares or supplies from now on. We’re gonna NEED this stuff, sooner or later.”

Hitchcock nodded soberly, overwhelmed by the task in front of them. Then he smiled. “Why don’t we do what those Coast Guard guys did?”

Wellesley cocked an eye. “What do you mean?”

“We could load the stuff into the skiffs on this side,” Hitchcock said, “then move the loaded skiffs to shore at that narrow place the Coasties brought their boat over. They needed the boat ramp to pull out, but there’s a much narrower place where it can’t be more than twelve or fifteen feet across. After we nose the loaded skiffs into the bank, we set up like a bucket brigade to pass the stuff across that narrow neck of land to skiffs from the other boats. That would save us a lot of handling, to say nothing of hauling it up and down the lock wall.”

Wellesley stroked his chin. “That’s a good idea, Dave. And I think it may have given me a better one.”

***

Wellesley eased the blunt nose of the
Miss Martha
into the massive concrete piling of the highway bridge. He touched it lightly, then slowly worked the boat’s stern around until the towboat fit snugly in the narrow channel between the bridge piling and the slender neck of land separating the Intracoastal Waterway and the Calcasieu River. He looked up as Hitchcock stepped to the open door of the wheelhouse.

“How we lookin’?” Wellesley asked.

Hitchcock nodded. “The stern’s about twenty feet off the bank, and we’re dead on perpendicular, so we couldn’t ask for a better setup.” Hitchcock hesitated. “But you sure we should be doing this, Lucius?”

Wellesley shrugged. “I can’t see as it’s gonna make much difference. The only reason for the lock in the first place is to keep saltwater out of supposedly agricultural land, and depending on conditions, it’s wide open more than half the time anyway. And the way things are going, I don’t see anybody planting that land anytime soon, if they ever did in the first place. I been runnin’ this stretch goin’ on twenty years and never saw nothin’ but swamp. Besides, it’ll be a little hole, and if they want to fill it in later, it won’t take more than a few truckloads of dirt.”

“Well, if you say so. I guess you might as well let ’er rip,” Hitchcock said.

Wellesley eased the twin throttles forward, and the
Miss Martha
pushed against the concrete piling holding her immobile. A powerful wash jetted aft from her flailing twin propellers, striking the canal bank and sending a boiling mass of muddy water over the narrow neck of dirt and marsh grass into the waters of the inlet beyond. The volume of water slowly increased as Wellesley went to full throttle, and the powerful prop wash from twenty feet away made short work of the dirt bank, opening a shallow channel in less than a minute. But he kept at it, and when he shut the engines down fifteen minutes later, there was a clear passage through the dirt bank almost as wide as the
Miss Martha
.

Wellesley maneuvered the big towboat out of the slot and brought her around expertly to lay against the bank some distance away to watch the proceedings. One of the flat-bottom aluminum skiffs all the towboats carried as tenders was making its way toward the newly opened hole, heavily loaded and deep in the water.

Sam Davis was operating the outboard, and Bud Spencer stood in the bow, with a long pole. Wellesley watched as Davis slowed and conned his skiff tentatively through the new channel as Spencer probed the bottom with his pole, checking the depth.

Then Davis was through, and Spencer dropped the measuring pole into the skiff and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“FOUR FEET OR MORE ALL THE WAY THROUGH, CAP!” he yelled, then lowered his hands to reveal a wide grin as he flashed Wellesley a thumbs-up.

Sam Davis grinned and waved as well before increasing speed and disappearing down the channel, around the lock to the
Judy Ann
waiting on the far side.

“I think this is gonna work just fine,” Wellesley said.

“Damned if it ain’t,” Hitchcock said.

Fort Box

Wilmington Container Terminal

Wilmington, North Carolina

Day 30, 7:35 a.m.

Levi Jenkins enjoyed the wind on his face as the boat glided across the glistening surface of the river toward Fort Box in the distance. Even this early in the morning the sun was formidable; it was going to be another hot one.

“You think this new plan is workable?” asked Anthony McCoy.

Levi looked over at his father-in-law and shrugged. “I don’t know enough to say. Wright couldn’t go into detail on the radio. It sounded like it might have possibilities as long as they don’t try to ram it down our throats.”

“Amen to that,” said Vern Gibson, from behind them at the outboard. “We could all use some new neighbors as long as they’re good, hardworking folks. But how do we know before they’re our neighbors; that’s my problem.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we? These guys are practical, so I’m sure they probably thought of that. Let’s just keep an open mind and hear what they have to say.”

They lapsed into silence, each with his own thoughts, as the boat covered the remaining distance to the Fort Box waterfront. They arrived under the watchful eyes of armed guards manning the rails of the container ships tied up to the wharfs. More guards than usual, it seemed to Levi. He mentally filed that away as Vern Gibson deftly maneuvered the little craft to the vertical ladder.

Levi fended the boat off the wharf pilings and tied up at the bottom of the ladder. The trio scrambled up to the dock.

“About time you river rats made it to town,” said a voice just as Levi’s head cleared the top of the ladder. He looked up to see Josh Wright’s grinning face and outstretched hand, and grabbed the hand for an assist up the last few rungs.

Levi returned the grin. “Good to see you too, Sergeant … I mean Lieutenant Wright.”

“All right, rub it in, why doncha?” said Wright, with a sheepish grin.

Levi laughed. “Every chance I get.”

Wright greeted each of the other two men cordially as they cleared the ladder, then turned and led them toward the headquarters building. He started off at a brisk pace, but slowed to accommodate his guests, who looked around wide-eyed as they walked.