When Ben Fielding arrived at the Full Moon Saloon, he found that Adrian was already there, nursing a gin and tonic. They sat briefly at the bar while Ben ordered a glass of Sprite. Then they moved to a booth to talk. Adrian carried over a paper bag that was gathered at the top. It looked like it held a bottle of liquor for a goodbye gift. Ben was hoping that he wouldn’t have to come up with a “Thanks but no thanks” speech, to explain again that he was a nondrinker.
Their conversation started out essentially as a repeat of what they’d talked about at the farewell barbeque. Adrian wished Ben the best for his move to the largely Mennonite community of Muddy Pond. “I’m really jealous of you, Ben,” he said. “I’d love to move out to the country, and have a place to shoot my guns without having to pay to go to a range.”
Then their conversation moved on to expectations of what things would be like at the law firm after Ben left, and a bit about Adrian’s failed marriage.
Adrian noticed Ben glancing at the paper bag on the table and said, “After the party last weekend, I found a couple of more tools that I’d like to give you. Sorry that I didn’t wrap them or anything.”
He slid the bag over to Ben. Opening it, Ben found that it held a hammer and screwdriver.
Adrian explained, “I hope you like these. The screwdriver is pretty cool. It’s an original Winchester brand, from back when they had a chain of hardware stores, in the 1920s and 1930s. The Winchester-marked tools and signage are quite collectible, especially with gun enthusiasts looking to branch out. I already put together a full set of their screwdrivers for my collection, but this one was a duplicate, so it’s yours.”
“Thanks, so much. This is great.”
Adrian pointed to the well-worn hammer and said, “Now, that belonged to my grandfather. It was supposedly handmade by a blacksmith that he knew in Hartsville. The handle is hickory, and is just as stout today as the day it was made back in the 1930s.”
Ben hefted the short-handled hammer, which had a head that must have weighed a pound and a half. He said again, “Thanks, Adrian. You’ve been very generous. I appreciate the socket set and the gardening tools that you gave us at the party, too. They’ll all come in handy.”
Their conversation wandered into politics, then sports, and finally back to Adrian’s marriage. At just after 10 p.m., the bar’s cocktail waitress walked by and asked, “Would y’all like another?”
Ben waved her off and said, “No, thanks.” He turned to Adrian and said, “I’ve got to get home to Rebecca and the kids.”
Adrian nodded. “I understand.”
They both stood up, and Ben picked up the bag. The tip of the screwdriver was poking through the paper bag, so Ben shifted it to his coat pocket.
They went out the bar’s front door and shook hands. Adrian gave Ben a wink, and said, “You take good care of yourself, Ben. Where you parked?”
“Around back.”
Adrian pointed to his BMW across the street and said, “I’m right here.” He waved and dashed across to the car, taking advantage of a gap in the traffic.
As Ben walked to the back parking lot, he was thinking about some of the things that Adrian had said about his ex-wife. He wondered if there was anything that he would have done differently, under the circumstances.
Two tall figures loomed up in the alley in front of him. One of them said, “Give me your wallet, ’tard.” The man raised his hand, and in the glow of the vapor light Ben could see the bare edge of a knife.
Instinctively, Ben swung with the hammer, still in the paper bag. The hammer connected with the man’s forearm in a half-glancing blow, and he dropped the knife. The other man moved in. Ben assumed that he also had a knife, so he swung with all the strength he could muster, and planted the hammer’s head in the side of the man’s neck. The attacker went down in a heap.
The first man shouted at Ben, “You’re dead, ’tard!” He reached behind the small of his back, as if pulling a gun. Ben stepped in and swung, again aiming for the neck. But the robber ducked. This time the hammer hit the man in the side of the head, making a strange slapping noise. The man fell to the ground next to the other robber.
Ben didn’t wait to see if they’d get up to charge at him again. He ran for his car, hopped in, and zoomed out the back of the parking lot.
His mind was racing. “What on earth just happened?” he asked himself aloud. He quickly got on I-65 and set his Ford’s cruise control at sixty. He was afraid that he might speed if he didn’t. He started praying. Ten minutes later, he was safely parked in his driveway. When he turned off the ignition, his hands were shaking. Growing up, Ben had never so much as been in an elementary school hallway fistfight. He felt overwhelmed by the enormity of what he’d just gone through. He fought to keep control of himself.
Ben picked up the hammer—still in the paper bag—and examined it under the car’s map light. There was no blood on the bag, but he decided to burn it regardless. He turned off the map light, and tried to get his breathing under control. He decided that it was best that he didn’t tell his wife what had happened. “I can’t burden her with this,” he said resignedly.
It took him a long time to get to sleep that night.
It wasn’t until two days later that Ben read in the online edition of the Tennessean that both of the robbers had died. One was dead at the scene, and the other died in the hospital emergency room of internal bleeding. The paper reported that both of them had long criminal records. Two knives and a .380 pistol were found on the pavement. Ben was amazed that just one hammer blow to the head or neck could kill a man. But obviously it could.
After much prayer, Ben decided not to talk about the events with the police. He burned the bag and ran the hammer through an ultrasonic cleaner just in case. Then it went into his tool chest. He didn’t use it again, until after the Crunch. Whenever he saw the Winchester screwdriver or the hammer, they reminded him of that night.
Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana
September, the First Year
Joshua Watanabe was bored. As he told his squadron mates, “There’s bored, and then there’s world-class bored.”
Alerts were always interesting for the first couple of hours, but once the two duty officers were sealed in behind a blast door down in the launch control center (LCC) capsules, seventy-five feet underground, and after all the systems checks were complete, the boredom set in. Joshua had watched all his DVDs several times each. He disliked playing cards. Instead, he often read his Bible and by-subscription Bible study and devotional magazines.
Joshua was a senior airman missile maintenance NCO stationed at Malmstrom AFB, Montana. Malmstrom had the largest ballistic missile field in the United States. The array of silos was spread out over 23,000 square miles. The LGM-30 Minuteman missile launch facilities and LCCs were each separated by several miles, and connected electronically. This distancing ensured that a “full exchange” attack by incoming nuclear missiles or bombs would disable only a few of the ICBMs. This would leave the rest capable of being launched in retaliation. The downside of this wide separation was that huge distances had to be driven by alert crews, security response teams (SRTs), and maintenance personnel. Montana was a huge state, and at times it seemed as if the missile fields occupied half of it.