The longhaired leader of the refugee band proclaimed, “Mister, I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s the Christian thing to do. Goodbye and good luck.
May God bless you and grant you safe travel.” Todd and the others waited until the band of refugees was well out of sight before they got out of their spider holes and re-covered them.
“It seems that the summer refugee season has begun,” Mary mused.
“Yep, it sure has,” Todd replied. “I’m just glad that we’re off the beaten path, rather than on a highway. If we were on a main drag, we’d be up to our elbows in refugees. Under those circumstances we wouldn’t be in any position to dole out charity.”
T.K. chimed in as they made their way up the hill, “It’s not so much the refugees that would worry me. It’s the escaped convicts that they talked about.”
Yet another ambush on the county road was called in over the field telephone a week later. As she snatched up her Remington 870, Lisa Nelson exclaimed, “Not again!” The three strangers that approached were unusual. All three were riding Giant brand mountain bikes. Two of the bicycles were towing small two-wheeled trailers. When the ambush was sprung, the bicyclists skidded to halt, completely surprised.
“Keep your hands on the handlebars!” Mike Nelson ordered. After a moment, he added, “We are not looters! We mean you no harm. Okay. Now I want you to get off the bikes one at a time, real slowly. You first, mister.” A balding, slightly chubby man dismounted. He engaged the bike’s kickstand, and raised his hands. Nelson gestured with his HK91. “Now you, ma’am.” The woman, who Mike judged to be in her fifties, dressed in blue jeans and a khaki shirt, also did as she was told. Like her husband, she raised her hands without being asked to do so. “Okay, now you, miss.” A young woman with red hair who appeared to be in her late teens joined her parents. Unlike her parents, she let her bike drop to the ground. She looked very frightened.
“Who are you, and where are you from?” Mike asked.
“My name’s Porter, Lon Porter. This is my wife Marguerite and my daughter Della. We’re from Seattle.”
“You came here directly from Seattle?”
“No. Last fall we drove our Volvo station wagon until we ran out of gas down on the Columbia River gorge, just east of Biggs Junction. We had to abandon the car and a lot of our clothes and things there. We were on our way to La Grande, Oregon, to stay with my brother’s family. We made it the rest of the way there on our bikes.
“My brother Tom has a little ranchette on the outskirts of La Grande. We stayed with his family at his house. It was a small house, so they didn’t have a spare bedroom. We slept in the living room. Everything was fine there, once Tom and I got over our nicotine fits. Neither of us was ready to quit smoking, but circumstances dictated that we went 100 percent cold turkey. Tom’s neighbors raise cattle and were generous, but it was obvious that the food was going to start running low, so we offered to move on. We didn’t want to be a burden.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Montana. I’ve heard that things are less torn up there.”
“Do you have family in Montana?”
Porter replied hesitantly, “Nn-no. Assuming that things are closer to normal there, I thought that I’d look for work. I’m a machinist.”
After a pause, Mike offered, “Again, we don’t mean you any harm, but we have to make sure that you aren’t looters. There have been some passing through the area. Cannibals, some of them. We are going to have to search you and your belongings. Once we are convinced that you are indeed whom you say you are, and that you have no hostile intentions, you’ll be free to go. Okay?”
“Okey-dokey,” said Porter.
Sounding more like a police officer now, Mike said, “Now step away from your bikes, turn your backs toward us, and put your hands on the back of your heads, fingers interlocked.”
The Porters did as they were told.
Mike spoke again. “Jeff, frisk Mr. Porter, and make it thorough.” Jeff set down his HK and approached the stranger from behind and searched him methodically. He found no weapons.
“Okay, Jeff, get back in your hole. Mary, search the women,” Nelson ordered. As soon as Trasel was back in position and had reshouldered his HK91, Mary popped out of her refrigerator hole, and frisked Mrs. Porter and her daughter.
When she began to search Della, Mary noticed that the girl was trembling.
She said in a soothing voice, “Relax, kiddo. We’re the good guys.” In searching the two women, Mary found that they were both carrying stainless steel Leatherman multipurpose pocket tools. Otherwise, she found no weapons.
Mike told the Porters that they could lower their hands, but warned them not to make any sudden movements.
Next, Mary searched the panniers on the bicycles and their trailers. The process took fifteen minutes. During the search, she called out a running inventory:“Rain gear. It’s Gore-Tex. Good quality, but awfully bright colors; a tool kit. Gosh, it’s heavy! In it we’ve got… a socket set, a big drill register… a set of taps and dies… a couple of micrometers, all kinds of stuff. I don’t even know what some of these tools are. A lot of them look custom made.” She then began delving deeper into the first trailer. “Here’s an AR-7 .22 rifle like Doug’s. But this one has a kind of brownish camouflaged stock instead of black. That’s different.” She pulled the plastic cap off the butt and extracted the gun’s receiver from its compartment. “No wonder! It’s an original Costa Mesa-marked Armalite! Dan told me that these things are pretty scarce.”
After restowing the AR-7, she continued her search. “About fifteen boxes of .22 shells. A half a box of .380 ACP Federal HydraShok hollow points. An over and under shotgun, broken down in this leather case. It’s a Ruger Red Label, twelve-gauge, a real beaut! Three boxes of twelve-gauge shells. Number seven bird shot, low base. A whole bunch of canned food. Some Mountain House freeze-dried stuff.”
She examined the bikes themselves. All three were made by the Giant company, and were in good repair. Della’s had a slightly smaller frame than the other two. There was a glaring difference between the two adult-sized bikes.
They were both the Sedona model, but Mrs. Porter’s was equipped with a large spring-loaded motor casing. It was connected by a pair of wires to a large black rectangular nylon case, which was cradled in a piece of black sheet metal. The sheet metal was bolted to the bottom tube of the frame. Mary eyed the system curiously. Looking toward Marguerite, she asked, “What is this thing, some sort of generator?”
More relaxed now, Mrs. Porter answered, “An E.R.O.S. motor unit, actually. They’re made by a company called Omni Instruments, down in California. The motor is powered by a pair of gel cells there in that black case. The batteries are almost dead right now, though. When you swing the lever on the handlebar shaft, it drops the motor into contact with the rear wheel of the bike. Then, when you push the little switch on the right handlebar, it engages the motor. When it is fully charged, it will motor you along at twelve miles an hour on level ground. It has about an eight-mile range. I mainly use it to help climb hills. It also does what is called regenerative braking. When you go downhill, you can drop the motor down and it acts as a generator and partly recharges the batteries. It also helps keep the bike from picking up too much speed on the down grades.”
Mary unzipped the battery case and examined the tops of the sealed gel cells. “Wow, this is a pretty neat set-up.” She then shifted her attention to the large handlebar bag on Lon’s bike. “Several road maps. A two cell Kel Lite. And… aha!, an automatic pistol. I’ve never seen this type. Has anyone here ever heard of an ‘Ortgies?’” Removing the gun’s magazine, she announced, “It looks like a Three-Eighty.” After slapping the magazine back into the pistol’s grip and stowing it back in the bag, Mary continued with her inventory. “Two spare magazines for the pistol. Both are loaded with hollow points. A hot patch tire repair kit; a coil of wire; a bike chain-link tool; some duct tape; and a pair of pliers. That’s all for this bag.”