The Army Comes Calling (4 page)

     Then he turned to the taller of the men, the one wearing the eagle, and said, “Colonel, my name is John. This is my friend Bryan. How can we help you?”

     “Are you two in charge of this place?”

     “We have no designated leaders. But we represent the group.”

     “We have orders from the President of the United States of America to take possession of your livestock. You and your people are welcome to stay here if you wish. But we will be here with transport vehicles by 1400 hours tomorrow to load your animals. Please have them ready to go.”

     John was unswayed.

     “Colonel, may I ask by what authority President Sanders thinks he can take livestock that doesn’t belong to him?”

     “It’s not President Sanders. Sanders died a long time ago. It’s President Clark. Call it an executive order for the essential health and welfare of the American people.”

     He was obviously not a man who enjoyed backtalk or debate. With a cockiness common of military officers who knew they could snuff out lives with a simple nod of their head, he turned on his heels and returned to his helicopter.

     His major followed without so much as a word.

     John and Bryan held their ground as the Cobra lifted off, swirling dust and leaves all around them. It rose to a level just above the treetops, banked sharply to port, and flew off to the north.

     Mark looked at John and could see he was seething.

     “Now what, John? Now what do we do?”

     “Well, we’re not giving up our livestock. That’s for damned sure.”

Chapter 6

     Several of the men worked through the night, moving livestock over to the mine by cover of darkness. By the time breakfast rolled around, they had done what Frank had suggested.

     And they were exhausted. Much too exhausted to have their head in the game if there was going to be a firefight later.

     The mood at breakfast was subdued, almost solemn. Most of the residents picked at their food.

     Since no one seemed to have any interest in eating anyway, Mark didn’t wait until everyone was finished, as had always been his practice.

     “If no one has any objections, we’ll go ahead and get started now.”

     He looked around. He saw a lot of sleepy faces, and some seething with anger, but no one appeared to object.

     “We’ve been up most of the night brainstorming and shifting some of our assets to the mine. Some of the actions we are going to propose to you this morning have already been done. Normally we’d have waited, but fourteen hundred hours is almost upon us. The actions we’ve taken are mostly common sense, and we were confident that the group would have concurred with our actions if we’d met last night.

     “I’ll yield the floor to John. He can explain what we’ve done to this point, and where he feels we need to go from here.”

     John stood up. He was a striking figure in a long sleeved heavily starched khaki shirt. He was the kind of man who commanded respect whenever he walked into any room, regardless of the circumstances. And on this particular morning, even more so. For on this day, he was wearing his war face.

     “I don’t mind telling you, this makes me angry. From the beginning, we had plans to share our livestock with others, so that the entire area could benefit by our efforts. In fact, we already shared with our friends on Buena Vista Drive and at Marty’s truck stop.

     “If the Army had come in and asked for a few head of everything we had, I’d have been the first to try to convince all of you to share with them.

     “But this… this stinks. I’ve never had much liking for bullies. For these guys to come in here and
demand
not just part of our livestock, but all of it, to me is just unconscionable.

     “I’m hoping all of you agree. We thought you would, at least enough of you to vote to oppose their demands. Bearing that in mind, we have moved roughly half of our farm animals into the mine, along with enough feed to sustain them for ninety days. We still have sufficient water in the storage tanks over there to last for up to two years. And we can continue to take small loads of feed through the tunnel and into the mine, enough to keep the animals going indefinitely, without ever having to walk out the gate.

     “Before I go any further, I’d like to take a vote to make sure I haven’t overstepped my authority, or overestimated everyone’s willingness to fight the Army’s demands. If I have, and if there’s a willingness to give up everything we’ve worked for without a fight, now’s the time to say so.”

     He turned back to Mark and nodded.

     Mark said, “Karen, would you do the count? Everyone, by show of hands, do you agree with John’s decision to tell the Army no, and to separate the livestock?”

     Karen’s head bobbed slightly as she scanned the room, counting the hands.

     “Thirty one.”

     “Very well. The motion carries. Since we’re short on time, I’d like to let John and Frank finish briefing everyone about what we’ve done at this point. They should be able to answer most of your questions and can save you the trouble of asking them. Once they’re finished we can open the floor for comments and unresolved questions. Back to you, John.”

     “Thank you. As I said, our game plan is simply to tell the Army no. They obviously have us outgunned. And if this really is the Army instead of a band of bandits, they almost certainly have us outnumbered too.

     “But we’re not without our own advantages. It’s always harder to take ground than it is to keep it, so there’s that. They’ve already seen Karen out in the open, so they know there are women and children here. I know the world has changed a lot in the last eight years, but I’d like to think the Army of the greatest country in the world still won’t shoot into a compound where there are innocent women and children.

     “That’s one thing we have on our side. Another, and perhaps even more key, is that we have the livestock they want in here. If they don’t care about harming us, perhaps they’ll care about harming the livestock. So we have that card to play too.

     “We want to move all of you women and children into the mine, except the women volunteers who have helped us fight in the past.” He looked specifically at Sarah, not wanting to hear the same dressing down she’d given Frank the day before.

     Sarah simply smiled and blew him a kiss.

     “Once you’re in the mine, you can consider yourself safe. We’ll man the security desk over there with video tied into the security desk here. You folks in the mine will be able to see what’s going on via the monitors. We’re going to ask that the children be kept away from the monitors in case it turns ugly.

     John nodded to Frank, yielding the floor to him. He wanted everyone to know he now considered Frank a full-fledged member of the team.

     Frank stood up and spoke.

     “They said they’d be back at fourteen hundred hours. Two p.m. That’s just a few hours away. We’re going to rebuff their demands and give them new terms.

     “Our terms.

     “We plan to tell them we’ll kill the livestock if they try to take them by force. But in the spirit of détente, we will agree to moisten their beak. That’s a term the mafia used to use. It means we will give them a taste, we will share our livestock with them to avoid a larger war.

     “One of two things is going to happen. Either they will try to push their way in to take the livestock by force, and we’ll start shooting them. If they don’t back off, we’ll kill off the entire population of farm animals. Then we’ll let them in to see the carnage and try to convince them that’s all we have.

     “If they buy it, they’ll be very angry, but we don’t think they’ll resort to reprisals. It would serve no purpose for them, and their men would serve witness to any atrocities they served up. I’m assuming that Army officers are still subject to courts martial.

     “The other thing that could happen is that they’ll agree to our terms. We will give them half of everything we have. It’ll actually be a quarter, since half our animals are already in the mine. But they won’t know that.

     “In exchange for us sharing with them, they will have to agree to two of our own demands. First, they must promise to leave us alone. To let us grow our own animals in peace, without any further visits from them. Second, they must promise not to kill all the animals for the temporary pleasure of their men, but rather to grow the herds so they can repopulate in greater numbers.”

     Frank looked at John.

     “I can’t think of anything else. You?”

     “Nope. That about covers it. I know you all have a lot of questions or comments, though, so let’s open it up.”

     Debbie asked, “What if they refuse our offer? What happens if we kill all of our own animals?”

     “Well, that depends. If you’re asking what will happen to us, I expect nothing. Like I said, they’ll be angry, but they’ll have nothing to gain by retaliating against us.

     “If you’re asking what happens to the animals, they might load up the carcasses and take them with them. They might figure if they can’t have live animals then they’ll at least have the world’s biggest barbeque for their men.

     “If they get huffy and just leave, then we’ll immediately dispatch Brad and Bryan to get two reefer trailers from the truck stop on Highway 83.

     “They call them ‘reefers,’ but most of them actually have the capability of getting much colder than a refrigerator. Cold enough to freeze the meat. We’ll spend a couple of days butchering the meat and freezing it in the trailers, and then pull it out a piece at a time to either eat it or turn it into jerky for later.

     “Whichever happens, we can no longer keep the surviving animals out in the open. That’ll mean they’re in the mine for good. I hate to deprive any creature of sunshine, but we’ll have to remember they could return at any time to see if we betrayed them. And we’ve already established that their helicopters are faster than our ability to get the animals under cover.”

Chapter 7

     The Army was nothing if not prompt. At one fifty nine p.m., the steady chop, chop, chop of a helicopter could be heard approaching from the west. When it came into view twenty seconds later, it was close enough to the treetops to clip one of them occasionally with its skids.

     At precisely the same moment the helicopter came into view, Sarah called out from the control center.

     “Okay, I can see a convoy of five… no, six, big military trucks in a line, coming toward us on Highway 83. It’s within half a mile or so, going at a pretty good rate.”

     The helicopter rose a hundred feet to mark the turnoff for the truck drivers. The convoy slowed as they got closer.

     All of the noncombatants had been evacuated to the mine two hours before. Only essential personnel remained in the compound. Sarah coordinated everything from the control center. Frank and John stood at the gate with Hannah and Sami. The girls would let them out when the chopper landed, so they could walk the hundred and twenty yards to the same place it set down the first time, just south of the compound’s wall.

     Once the men were outside the gate, the girls would proceed immediately to the chicken coop, don heavy leather gloves, and stand by for further instructions. Brad was already there waiting.

     Bryan was in the cattle barn with an AR-15 rifle. Mark was in the pig barn with another one.

     Sarah’s instructions were simple. She was to watch the monitors closely. If there was any sign of trouble… if John and Frank were accosted or taken into custody, or if the troops advanced toward the compound to scale the walls or break in, she was to give the word immediately.

     If Sarah gave the word, all the animals would be killed immediately. With the sixteen head of cattle and fourteen pigs still in the compound, it would be over within a minute. Since the chickens had to be chased down and have their necks broken, the process would take a bit longer. Still, Hannah and her crew figured they could kill all twenty chickens within four to five minutes.

     The chopper landed within inches of where it had set down the first time it was there.

     At least it appeared to be the same chopper. It had no serial number painted on the side, as did other Army helicopters John and Frank had seen. John presumed it was unmarked because it wasn’t part of a normal detachment of such vehicles. He guessed that this was the personal chopper assigned to the colonel who had visited him before.