Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (7 page)

     Tom managed a smile. As long as the guard maintained his current position and didn’t come into the barn, it would be very difficult to see what Tom was doing.

     He went to work, trying to figure out a way to free himself.

-11-

     By early afternoon Randy and Sarah figured they had all the intelligence they were going to get. At least enough to tell them where Tom was likely to be held hostage and how many men were in the compound. They’d counted nine, including the sentries.

     By Randy’s rough estimation that meant there were probably more like thirty.

     “In the Rangers, they tell us that most armed camps keep about a third of their sentries out and about at any given time. That’s so they can cover all three shifts. The leaders of the gangs, and their lead henchmen, tend to break everything down by half or so. That includes the cooks and stablemen, but I’d be willing to bet they have none of those in this gang. They probably make the hostages do all of that.”

     “So, Ranger Randy, what’s your plan to go up against thirty armed men?”

     “Don’t have one yet. But we’ve got all afternoon to come up with one.”

     The pair made their way back into the forest, then traveled back to their camp.

     On the way Randy said, “We need to move our camp. In operations such as this, it’s never a good idea to stay in one place for more than a night or two.”

     “But what if Tom breaks out on his own and comes back looking for us? How will he know where to find us?”

     “That’s your mission for today.”

     “Meaning?”

     “My mission is to come up with a plan for our assault on the compound. Your mission is to find a way to leave a message for Tom at the old camp. Something only he will recognize and understand.”

     They made it back to the camp half an hour later and Randy asked, “Have you come up with anything yet?”

     “Yes.”

     “Atta girl.”

     She tore a sheet of paper from a legal pad in her backpack, then dug out a black sharpie.

     On the paper she wrote in block letters:

COMPOUND TO YOUR OFFICE

SAME DISTANCE, SAME DIRECTION

     Then she laid the note on the ground in the center of the clearing where they were breaking camp. She found four rocks, each about the size of a pine cone, and laid one rock on each corner of the note.

     Then she took a large handful of pine needles and sprinkled them over the note until it was completely covered.

     “This is how Tom taught us to leave a message at his ranch house if we ever had to evacuate our compound while he was away. He told us to leave him such a message to tell us where we evacuated to, so he could hook back up with us. He’ll see the four rocks on the ground, spaced in a square, and know immediately that there’s a message buried there.”

     “And the words, what do they mean?”

     “Absolutely nothing to you or to anyone else. Unless they know that Tom’s sheriff’s office is exactly one and a quarter mile north northwest of our compound’s main gate.”

     “Brilliant, Sara. But you have to always be careful not to give away information you haven’t intended to.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “By sharing that information, you just told me exactly where to find your compound.”

     “How so?”

     “If I ever went looking for you, all I’d have to do is ask around to find out where Tom’s sheriff’s office was. Then I’d trek south southeast for exactly one and a quarter mile and I’d be at your compound’s front gate.”

     “Touché. But then again, I already told you you’re invited to visit us anytime, so you wouldn’t have to be sneaky. I’d give you directions anyway. So shut up.”

     Randy smiled.

     “I love it when you’re feisty.”

     In their new camp, they had some time to kill.

     “Randy, do you have any children?”

     “None of my own. I dated a few women, never found one who I liked enough to spend eternity with. Or who would settle for being a Ranger’s wife.”

     “I would think that being the wife of a Ranger would be a noble thing. Something to be proud of.”

     “That, dear lady, is because you’re only seeing one side of it. The life of a Ranger might be all adventure. But being the wife of a Ranger isn’t so easy. She must stay at home and mind the store, so to speak, while her man goes off for weeks at a time. While he’s gone, she has to fend for herself and their young ones, without any clue of when he’s coming back and in what condition he’s coming back in. Or if he’s coming back at all.

     “Picture yourself as a young wife back in the days of World War II. You might have a couple of kids, and your husband might be in an infantry battalion working its way across Europe.

     “Imagine what it would be like going for weeks at a time, not receiving any letters from your husband because there was no good way to communicate. And all the time knowing that your husband was getting shot at by the Italian Army, strafed by Luftwaffe fighters and dodging land mines. Imagine what it would have been like for her to go to bed each night, not knowing whether her husband was dead or alive.”

     “I know, huh? I guess back then they didn’t have emails or cell phones or any of that stuff.”

     “Exactly. And we’ve returned to those days of not being able to quickly communicate with each other. And along with that, we’re no longer able to send out calls for help to other Rangers when we’re in over our heads. We’re pretty much on our own now, and if we can’t use our heads and experiences to get us out of a sticky situation, we may not make it back home.

     “But what would worry me most about leaving a wife and family back home wouldn’t be her sleepless nights. It would be what us Rangers have come to call the ‘Babcock factor.’”

     Sara looked at him and asked, “The what?”

     “The Babcock factor. It’s named after Charlie Babcock. He was a hardened criminal up in Amarillo. He was in the local jail, put there by a couple of Texas Rangers before the power went out. He was able to escape, as well as several of the other inmates when most of the jailers deserted their posts to be with their families.

     “All the other escapees scattered in all directions. But not Babcock. He had a vendetta to fulfill. He tracked down the home addresses of the two Rangers who’d arrested him, with the intent of killing them. But when he went to their homes he found they weren’t there. They’d been dispatched on horseback to catch some outlaws down in Abilene.

     “So Babcock did the next best thing. He killed their families instead. And he did terrible things to them first. Things I can’t even describe to you, because just thinking about them makes me shudder. And it takes a lot to move me, because I’ve seen a lot of things since I started this job.

     “That would bother me the most about having a wife and family in this line of work. The thought of going to work and leaving them at the mercy of bad men I’d once put away, who were now out for revenge.”

     “This Babcock guy… what happened to him when you caught him?”

     Randy didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached into his saddlebag and took out a black and white photograph, about four by six inches.

     A mugshot.

     “He’s still on the loose. We don’t know where. But I carry this with me wherever I go, to remind me what he looks like. The Rangers no longer have a ‘Most Wanted’ list. We once did, just like the FBI’s. But if we had one, he’d be number one on the list. I hope to find him one day.”

     “And if you do?”

     “Then I’ll resist the urge to kill him myself. And I’ll haul him in so that the justice system can kill him on behalf of those two Rangers who can no longer catch him themselves.”

     She gave him a puzzled look and he elaborated.

     “One of them never made it back from his mission. He was shot in the back just outside of Abilene. In a way, I guess he was the lucky one. He never knew his family had been murdered.

     “The other one was a good friend of mine. Tom Cohen. He shot himself after going home and finding the mutilated bodies of his wife and kids.”

     “I hope you catch him. But it’s a big state, a lot of ground to cover. I think there’s a good chance you’ll never even see him again.”

     “Yes. But if there’s a God in heaven then there’s also a hell. And he’ll get his due eventually. I just hope I can help him get a taste of it here on earth as well.”

     “So, do you have a plan yet?”

     “Not totally. But enough for the next couple of days.”

     “Next couple of days? It’s gonna take that long to get them out?”

     “There’s no sense in rushing it, Sara. When you rush things, that’s usually when people get hurt. There’s no real hurry. There’s no indication that either Tom or your mom are in any immediate danger. If Tom is indeed in the barn he’s being fed and watered. They won’t kill him for the time being. Not since they got the word he’s worth a lot of money alive.

     “That gives us the time and the flexibility to thin their ranks a little. So when we do go in, we’re not so badly outnumbered.”

     “And how do we do that, exactly?”

     “We wait until nightfall, little lady. And then you watch and learn.”

-12-

     Robbie opened a can of tuna fish and ate it with a plastic spoon. He’d come to learn, through trial and error, which canned goods were still safe to eat.

     Canned tuna was one of his staples. He enjoyed the taste of it, and it had a long shelf life. More than three years, according to the time stamp on the bottom of the can. He knew he could probably double that and still be safe. Manufacturers didn’t like being sued, and always allowed a lot of leeway between the time they said their products went bad and when they actually did.

     Robbie knew by now that some brands of canned foods contained considerably more water than others. Typically the private label or store brands, what people once called “generic” brands. More water meant they were more subject to freezing on store shelves that were no longer heated during the winter. Any can that was swelled, he knew was probably tainted from having been frozen and then thawed several times since the blackout began.

     These days Robbie survived on the few canned goods he could find that were still safe to eat. Mostly Star-Kist brand tuna and various brands of canned pasta, Vienna sausages and tamales.

     Early on, just a week after the blackout started, he’d walked to the neighborhood HEB supermarket two blocks from his house. While looters with no common sense had wasted their time stealing DVDs and electronics that would never work again, Robbie filled a shopping cart with five pound bags of apples and potatoes. Then he went back for three other carts until all had been depleted, each time wearing his San Antonio Police uniform so others wouldn’t challenge him or try to steal from him.

     He’d spent many hours slicing the potatoes and apples and laying them all over his apartment, as well as the vacant apartment he broke into next door to his. The apple and potato slices grew dark as they dried out, but he knew they were still edible. As food became more and more scarce, the dried apples and potatoes supplemented his diet. They kept him strong where others grew weak. They enabled him to beat and rob others who could no longer defend themselves. They allowed him to go on while so many others were slowly starving to death and giving up.

     They allowed him to survive when so many others didn’t.

     He’d eaten human flesh on several occasions, but didn’t particularly like it. He was disappointed, for a man-eater would have had a never-ending supply of fresh meat, even as other food sources dwindled down to nothing. Perhaps the last vestiges of sanity prevented Robbie from becoming a cannibal. For his mind was almost totally gone at that point.