Crudo and Francisco stepped into the backyard to talk in private.
“Send a team to look for any other homes with these antennas.” Francisco pointed to the rooftop array. “And carefully bring every piece of equipment you find back here.” He wished they had known about this earlier. Francisco could have ordered his men to detain anyone with radio equipment. For now, he would have to count on this one old man to run the equipment. By the look of him, he might die any minute.
“Pick three of the boys—the smartest ones. Have them sit with the old man and learn everything they can. Oh, and if you find another radio like this, don’t send the family away. We’ll need leverage.”
“Okay, Jefe,” Crudo said, heading back around to the front of the house.
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
Jeff startled awake with ice-cold feet against his legs. His middle son, Erik, had climbed into bed between Jeff and Tara, taking Jeff’s body heat like a birthright. From her stirring, Jeff could tell the boy had awakened Tara, too.
With one hand, Jeff lifted Erik and pulled him onto his pillow. He pressed one of Erik’s cold feet between his meaty hands, slowly warming the six-year-old. When one foot reached body temperature, Jeff switched and massaged Erik’s other foot as well. After a few minutes, the boy’s feet weren’t so shockingly cold. His hands on Jeff’s chest were chilly, too, so Jeff warmed them one at a time as well.
“What’re you doing?” Tara asked, perplexed by the movement in the dark.
“I’m warming up his hands and feet. He’s freezing.”
“The other boys must’ve stolen the covers,” she guessed.
“He has piano player hands,” Jeff mused.
Like a lightning strike building in the clouds, the atmosphere between Jeff and Tara turned ominous, even in the pitch dark. Voltage crackled inexplicably from her to him.
“There is more than one way to be a man, Jeff,” she said with deadly seriousness, flat-toned and pregnant with enmity.
In the shorthand of a couple who had been married more than fifteen years, volumes were spoken in that sentence, the import slowly descending on Jeff. It occurred to him that he had stomped on a mother’s love for her child and a daughter’s love for her father all in one sentence.
He has piano player hands…
Jeff had been holding Erik’s cold hands and warming his son’s long, slender fingers—a genetic curiosity, considering Jeff’s own stumpy, cigar-shaped fingers. Erik’s hands had skipped a generation, getting their form from Tara’s father.
Tara’s father had spent his adult life as a piano salesman, tinkling the ivory keys for Utah housewives who might like a piano for their home. He had been a concert pianist at one point, then a music teacher, but money had lured him from music to sales. He had provided for his family, as many men had throughout history, by giving up his dreams in exchange for a steady paycheck. His hands, long and lithe, had served him well in his chosen profession.
The questionable masculinity of a piano salesman, in contrast to his warrior son-in-law, set the stage for conflict. Tara’s father and Jeff had drawn battle lines within a year of the marriage. Conscripts had been recruited from the family. A cold war had settled between them. “Piano player hands” was anything but an innocent comment and the implications of the statement reverberated between Tara and Jeff in the dark of their bed.
“Why are you mad? I didn’t mean anything by that,” Jeff argued.
“You meant everything by that,” Tara hissed.
Jeff couldn’t deny it. He had taken a cheap shot, banked off his son, aimed at his father-in-law—a man who had refused to admit that Jeff was the better man to protect their family. Right now, the old man was hiding in his cabin, maybe dead. The thought made Jeff feel disgusted with himself, but he couldn’t figure out why.
“And you’re doing it here, Jeff. You’re alienating these people, too.”
Jeff couldn’t help himself. “I didn’t alienate your father. He’s the one who chose that cabin over his own survival.”
“Goddamn you, Jeff Kirkham,” Tara swore, keeping her voice low to avoid waking Erik. “You sent my dad away years ago when you made it clear you thought of him as less of a man. You sent him and my mother to that cabin long before the collapse. You make people feel like fools. You’re doing it here, too. A lot of people don’t like you, Jeff. A lot of people feel like you’re running rough-shod over them. A lot of people, especially the women, think you’re taking too much control.”
“Why do you care? You didn’t want to come here anyway,” Jeff whispered.
“Don’t you do that. Don’t play CIA mind games with me. We agreed to come here and now you need to make this work.”
Jeff didn’t think he was playing CIA mind games but apparently Tara did. So he chose his next words carefully. “I don’t know how to make these civilians happy. If I do my job, strangers die. If I don’t do my job, we die.”
The words hung in the air. Then Tara replied, “That may be so. We may need to fight to survive. But, for a smart guy, you almost always reduce things down to just two options… you do that a lot.”
Jeff heard her roll over, her signal that the conversation was over.
Erik stirred in his sleep and Jeff pulled his son closer. Jeff could sense the searing truth of what Tara had said, like a cloud of ozone hanging over their bed. At the same time, he had absolutely no idea what to do with the information.
11
“JT TAYLOR, HERE, BRINGING YOU news of a world gone mad. It’s two a.m. in the morning and I have no idea how so many of you are doing this thing sober. What’s wrong with you people?
“Just heard from Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany. They’re barricaded in and taking fire from Muslim forces. I still don’t understand where Muslim forces came from. Where’d they get the guns? Inquiring minds want to know.
In case you were wondering, it looks as though the United States Army has decided to let me keep my Humvee and my trailer. Thank you gents. You only tried to blow me up twice, so I guess we’re friends now.
I’m hearing from two ham operators out of 19th Group in Salt Lake City, Utah. Get this: the Mormon Church is calling anyone and everyone to come join their army and defend their big-ass temple. Sounds like 19th Group Special Forces―or what’s left of them―might send some boys to whack a bunch of gangbangers…”
The Avenues
Salt Lake City, Utah
Crudo handed Francisco a pair of binoculars. The lenses kept collecting tiny droplets of water from the early morning dew. Francisco used his shirttail to wipe the moisture away. They had slipped into the back of a house on Virginia Street to observe an enemy army. Overnight, the Los Latigos advance in the Avenues met serious resistance, and Francisco had no idea who they were.
The two gangsters belly-crawled up to the window and peered through the slit between the curtains and the windowsill. Snipers hiding in the houses across Virginia Street had already killed a dozen of his men this morning. Even taking a look posed a risk.
At a glance, Francisco could see twenty or thirty men, which meant there were probably a hundred fifty men dug in. His men could overrun that many men and absorb acceptable losses.