“How much shorter?” Daniel asked.
“At a guess? I’d say we should have twelve hours, less if I transmit on anything but the Harris net.” He meant the frequency-hopping secure tactical radios, almost impossible to detect or intercept.
“Well, shut it all down!” cried Larry, looking around as if for an off switch for the gear. He started to move toward the main power cable running to the lone outlet in the barn.
“Leave that alone!” Vinny yelled. “We already shut off the transmitter. Don’t panic.”
Larry stopped, looked sheepish.
Vinny went on, “I’d say fifty-fifty they find us at all. They probably have us to within two to four hundred square miles right now, but unless we transmit, they have to do it the hard way – with people. That means identifying your acquaintances, friends and family, you know, six degrees of separation stuff. Nodal analysis. Then they have to dig through everyone’s records, and even digitized stuff isn’t necessarily textual data.”
Blank looks.
“Like if it’s a document that’s been scanned in, but wasn’t generated on a computer – it’s just a picture. Needs a lot of processing power and human-in-the-loop to dig stuff out. If it’s a handwritten document they might miss it entirely except by a human. How much manpower do you think they have devoted to this?”
“You tell me,” Zeke said.
“Well…if it’s just one bigwig in the Agency, he could probably form a small team of three or four analysts and set them to work without drawing any attention. So…it’s a crap shoot. At least twelve hours, more likely several days, and like I said, they may never make the connection to Zeke’s wife’s maiden name.”
“What about HUMINT?” asked Spooky. He meant human intelligence. Boots and eyeballs. “If they come here and ask the sheriffs, ask people.”
“No way,” said Vinny. “That would take forever. There are at least five thousand residences within ten miles of here. Besides, people around here aren’t going to tell tales to a stranger, or the Feds.”
“Okay,” started Zeke, “no panic, but we tear it all down. We can’t risk being caught. Take it all apart, pack it up. And everyone pull your batteries from your cell phones if you haven’t already. Dan, your van is going into the lake. Sorry, but it’s the only vehicle they have positive ID on. Spooky, you have to park the Porsche somewhere, it’s too noticeable. We’ll use the other four SUVs. Pack everything in there. And rip out your lo-jacks, your GPS units, everything that can be traced. Come on people, chop-chop.” Zeke clapped his hands.
Everyone tore down and packed all the gear in a flurry of activity. Boxes went from vehicle to vehicle, all sorts of cases and high-tech-looking containers. Daniel wondered what all they had besides weapons and Vinny’s commo gear.
He cleaned out the van really well, took the plates off and tried to sanitize it. Spooky helped. They couldn’t get rid of every identifying mark and number, but the more they could slow those guys down, the better. He put all his stuff in the Land Rover, his long gun case, his ruck and his aid bag. One or two men in each vehicle meant they had plenty of cargo room.
Zeke took the van, Spooky fired up his Porsche, and Skull drove the Jeep as the recovery vehicle. An hour later they came back in it, having sent the van into the lake in a hidden cove. If they were lucky it would be months before anyone found the site.
In the meantime Daniel had cooked some food, trying to use up everything that they couldn’t bring along. He laid a huge spread, knowing he’d eat a lot of it, and the others wouldn’t be too far behind. Stuffing their faces, between bites the talk naturally turned to the coming operation.
“How soon do we go?” Daniel threw out. “And how?”
“Qui Audet Adipiscitur,” quoted Skull.
Daniel furrowed his brow at Skull. “Latin?”
“Who Dares, Wins. The motto of the SAS.” He meant the Special Air Service, British special forces.
“You mean you think we should go in fast and hot.”
“Yes.”
Daniel nodded, thoughtful.
Zeke looked at him, then at Skull. “I agree, to a point. And I think I want the treatment.”
“What?” That caught Daniel off guard.
“Hey, I’m the oldest one here, I’m getting fat, my feet are flat, my cholesterol is high, I got a hernia, and it ain’t gonna get any better. And we have to do this right and do it fast, for Ricky’s sake if nothing else. I’m willing to take the risk.”
Daniel shouldn’t have been surprised. The payoff looked too big, too rich, to ignore. “Anyone else?” He asked around, challenging.
Skull shook his head. So did the rest, though more slowly.
“Not yet,” said Nightingale. “What if it makes my…makes me not be able to…you know.” He looked down at his crotch.
Everyone burst out laughing, but it was a legitimate question. They just didn’t know anything about the side effects.
“Well, I haven’t noticed any problems.”
“I don’t see any women around here to test yourself on.”
The next few suggestions were vulgar; warriors can be rough-spoken. After the laughter died out and everyone had pretty much finished their dinners, Zeke drained his beer and said, “Well?”
Everyone stared expectantly at Daniel. “Well what?”
Zeke held out his hand, palm up. “Bite me.”
“Oh, man…this is creepy,” Daniel answered. “Maybe we should just cut our thumbs and mix our blood.”
Zeke shook his head. “We don’t know that would work. We do know this does. Bite me.”
“Bleah, bleah,” Daniel did his best Dracula. “Okay.” Grabbing his hand he bit Zeke, slobbering on the wound a bit for good measure. “Yech. I’d make a bad vampire.” The skin tasted like cheap after-shave, which meant really, really horrible. To his credit Zeke hadn’t flinched, just rubbed the bloody spots a little and looked.
“It took a little while. Overnight, for me. Don’t expect anything before that, except to get unusually hungry and sleepy,” Daniel put in.
Zeke shrugged. “Que sera, sera.”
They tidied up, locked up and moved out.
Daniel called his neighbor Trey with a clean phone on the way. “Hey Trey, Dan here.”
“Hey, man. Glad you called. There is a truck parked in your driveway. It says Dominion Power on it, but I saw four guys get out and they went in your side door. Which seems weird since I know you’re not home, and it’s after hours. You want me to call the police?”
Daniel really didn’t want him to. He actually wanted them to clean up the body, if that was what they were doing. He hoped they weren’t setting up a frame for Jenkins’ murder, but pushed that thought away.
“No…Trey, it’s some classified stuff, national security. I think these guys are bad guys but I don’t want to tip them off. I’ll just report it myself, okay? Don’t get involved. They might be dangerous.” He didn’t think Trey would. He was a nice guy, but not the adventurous type.
“Okay, man, your call. You got a number I can reach you at?”
“No, sorry, I’m moving around. I’ll call you now and then, okay?”
“All right now. You take care.” Trey hung up.
Daniel pulled out the batteries and tossed the phone out the window when they crossed the next river. It traced a sweet arc downward to splash fifty feet below. Then he went to sleep.
He woke up when their convoy was pulling into Outdoor Mountain near Richmond, a mecca for the hunting, fishing, and nature sporting crowd. A hundred thousand square feet of gear, from the smallest lure up to bass boats and ATVs, and guns and ammo.
Lots of guns and ammo. They did some shopping.
They didn’t actually buy any guns. That would take a background check, ID, and an hour or two of waiting even if the record is clean. They couldn’t be sure any one of them wasn’t on some watch list somewhere.