Bug Out! Part 7: Mile High Motorhomes (21 page)

“Only one space, huh,” she said, a sly smile on her face. “How convenient.”

“I could sleep on that couch,” he said, pointing at it.

“No way,” she said. “You can behave, can’t you?”

“Of course,” Terry said. He went to closet in the hall and pulled out the bedding. Then he set it down and starting working on the dinette. He pulled off the cushions, lowered the table, and then put the cushions back on.

“Wow, that was easy,” Trish said. She brought over the bedding and they put it on together.

“Sorry, all we have is throw pillows,” Terry said, picking them up off of the couch.

“No problem…we’ll be out in no time anyway.”

Terry nodded. “Shoot, you need your PJs.”

“I’ll just sleep in my underwear,” she said.

Terry swallowed heard, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden.

“You okay with that?” she said, giving him that sly smile of hers. “I think you are. Quit staring at me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Get in and turn around,” she whispered. “I’m not going to put on a strip show for you.”

“Okay,” he said, sheepishly. He kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt, and then his jeans, climbing into bed in a hurry, and turning towards the wall. He heard the rustle of clothes as Trish got undressed. His heart was pounding. Then he felt her get under the covers and move next to him.

“Okay, you can turn around now,” she said. He turned, facing her, looking into her pretty face. She smiled at him, and gave him a quick peck on the lips. Then she turned on her back and sighed.

“Your dad and I had a good talk when we were driving,” Terry said.

“Oh, really? When I was asleep?”

“Yes.”

“About me, I suppose,” she whispered. “Typical.”

“Oh, it wasn’t bad at all.”

She turned back towards him and smiled. “I wasn’t asleep.”

Terry was dumbfounded. She giggled at him.

“You weren’t? You were snoring.”

She started making the snoring noise, and then giggled again.

“So you heard everything?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered, “and I love you too.” She moved closer to him and gave him a passionate kiss. Then she laid back down on her back. “Now, go to sleep.”

Frank and Jane were sitting in the dinette of their coach, having a bite to eat before bed.

“You’re going to wear the battery out on that thing,” she said, watching him working with the iPad. He was zooming in on one area after another, and checking back at the ravine every so often.

“I’ll put it on the charger when we go to bed,” he said.

“You’re really worried, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody getting closer to us?”

“No, not that I can see, and there’s only about ten people at the ravine now.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“The constant stream of bad guys going east on I-70. They’re going in small groups. I wonder if the Army knows.”

“You want to turn on the radio and see what’s going on in Denver?”

Frank closed the iPad’s cover and set it down on the dinette table. “No. Let’s go to bed. We’re going to have a long day tomorrow.”

“Alright, Frank.” They got up and went into the bedroom.

Frank woke up, startled.
He was in a cold sweat. It was a bad nightmare. The enemy had Jane, and they were about to start torturing her right in front of him. His heart was still pounding. He quietly got out of bed and looked at his cellphone. It was 4:45. He wasn’t tired, but then they were in bed before 10:00 last night. He got dressed as quietly as he could, and slipped out of the bedroom, as Jane snored softly. Lucy was on him as soon as he got through the door, her nails clicking on the floor, her tail wagging.

“It’s too early, girl,” he whispered. “Settle down.” He switched on one of the small LED lights, picked up the iPad, and turned it on. The LTE caught quickly, and he loaded his long range app. The only change from the previous night was at the bridge. Now there weren’t any enemy hits there at all. He followed the road back up to Eagle…no hits along the road there, either, but the town had many more hits than the last time he looked. Looked like over a thousand, and there was still a light stream of hits along I-70. Denver had more people on the western outskirts of town. No leakage to the south, in the direction of Colorado Springs. He felt relieved.

Lucy was still on Frank, trying to get his attention. He sighed and got up, putting on her leash. They went out the door as quietly as possible. He locked the door behind him, and they walked towards a grass median near the edge of the parking lot. There was no light coming from any of the coaches, but one of the big rigs on the far side was getting ready to go. It was cold out, but not nearly as bad as he expected. Lucy growled, looking behind him. Frank whirled around, thinking that he should have brought his gun.

“It’s okay,” a voice whispered. Frank tried to make out the face of the approaching man. It was General Hogan. He was alone.

“I was hoping to get to you early,” he said, extending his hand. “Can we talk?”

“You here alone?” Frank asked.

“I’ve got a few men in town. They’re sleeping.”

Frank pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and looked at it. He didn’t feel any buzz, but he wanted to look anyway.

“Going to make a call, Frank?” he asked.

“No, just double checking something.”

“What?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you inside. Let’s go into my coach.”

They walked over to the coach, and Frank unlocked the door. Lucy jumped up the steps, and Frank followed. General Hogan waited until they were all the way in, looked around cautiously outside, and then walked up the steps.

“Want some coffee?” Frank asked.

“Love some, but you don’t want to run your generator now,” he said, looking at the Keurig machine on the counter.

“I’ve got a French press,” he said, getting it down. He filled the tea kettle and put it on the stove, turning on the burner below it. Then he sat down at the dinette, and motioned to the General to sit. He nodded and slid into his seat.

“I’m glad you guys got out of that RV Park,” the General whispered. “We were worried.”

“We were lucky.”

“Whose idea was it to blow that bridge? That was brilliant.”

“Gabe, the park owner.”

“Ah, yes, I remember him. Odd fellow. I loved all of the do-it-yourself stuff he had there. He thinks outside the box. That’s valuable.”

Frank laughed. “You should have seen the moat.”

“Moat? You’re joking.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“Well, Frank, you and I both knew that place was a death trap.”

“Gabe knew as well.”

“He came with you? Great. I was afraid that he’d stick around there.”

“His nephew was there…part of the reason was to make sure that Gabe didn’t decide to stick it out there.”

“Good,” the General said.

“What’s going on? What’re you guys doing…that you can tell me.”

“We’re helping to get citizens ready to defend themselves after the battle of Denver is over,” he said.

“We’re going to win that battle, I hope.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re going to win, but it’s not going to be easy, and a lot of people are going to get killed.”

“Ours?”

“Civilians,” the General said, a grim look on his face.

“You know, there’s a large, slow movement of men into west Denver,” Frank said.

“We know the strength they’re at now,” the General said. “We haven’t seen any large movement of troops lately, though.”

“Look at this,” Frank said. He picked up the iPad and showed him the map.

“What are those icons?”

“Enemy chips.”

The General got a big grin on his face. “You cracked them.”

“Partially,” Frank said. “Don’t tell anybody in your command.”

The General focused on the screen. His look became more and more concerned as he realized how many enemy fighters were on the way. “We don’t have enough troops in Denver,” he said.

Frank reached under the table and pulled his laptop out of the backpack that was down there. He set it on the table and got it started. “What kind of phone do you have, General?”

“I’ve got an Android phone. Why?”

“You got the charging cord?”

“No, it’s back at my hotel.”

“What brand?”

“Samsung,” he said.

“Good, that’s what I have. I’ll go get my cable.”

The tea kettle started to whistle. Frank got up and finished making the coffee, pouring a cup for each of them.

“Ah, thanks so much,” the General said as he took a sip.

Frank went into the bedroom and picked up his charging cable.

“Who’s out there, honey?” Jane asked, still half asleep.

“General Hogan,” Frank said. She sat up.

“I’ll get dressed.”

“Good, I just made some French press.”

He went back out and sat down in the dinette. The laptop was ready to go, so he logged on.

“What’re you going to do?” the General asked.

“I’ve got two apps that I’d like to load onto your phone.”

“Apps?”

“Yeah, I wrote them a few days ago. The first one is a short range, peer to peer app that will let you know when you’re close to somebody that has an enemy chip in them. The second app is the one we were just looking at on the iPad. It places the chip icons on a GPS underlay.”

“Holy crap,” the General said. “You said you were still working on cracking these. What’s left?”

“The payload is encrypted. I want to crack that, so we can find Saladin and the other leadership folks.”

“Oh,” he said. “What you already have is probably enough, you know.”

“Hand me your phone, General.”

He slid his phone across the table to Frank, and he connected it to the laptop via the cable. Then he did some typing and clicking with the mouse. After about a minute, he pulled the phone off of the cable and slid it over to the general. Then he got up and stood alongside him.

“If you are within about half a mile of a chip, your phone will make this buzz, and you’ll get this readout…one for each chip it finds, sorted by proximity,” he said, using test mode to demonstrate. “If you hit the refresh button, it’ll do another scan and show you the info again.”

“Does this rely on cell towers?”

“No, this is peer to peer. The FCC would have a fit.” he chuckled. “As if I care.”

“So with this I can see right away if my unit has been compromised.”

“Yes,” Frank said. Then he tapped the icon for the Long Range app. A GPS map opened. Frank used his fingers to zoom it out so it included Eagle. Icons spread over the screen, clumped around the town and I-70.

“Wow! What’s the range on this app?”

“Worldwide,” Frank said,” but it relies on cell towers and internet connections. I’ve been using it to watch Eagle, I-70, and Denver.”

“You don’t see any chips around here, do you?”

“No,” Frank said. “One thing to keep in mind with this one, though. If you’ve got enemy in an area with no cell coverage, you won’t see them on this long range app.”

“Will I see them on the short range app?”

“Yes, if you’re close enough…roughly half a mile, remember?”

“Okay. What’re you going to do with this?”

“It’s going to get published automatically…everybody will have access.”

“When?”

“I’ve set it to start releasing to all of the app stores and forums in about two weeks,” Frank said.

“Why the delay?”

“We want to get a shot at Saladin and the other leaders before they’re wise to us.”

“You want to find them and kill them,” the General said. “You know they’re going to be heavily guarded, right?”

“Yes,” Frank said. “I know that we might not be able to pull this off, and I know we might die trying. That’s why I set up the auto release of the apps. I can’t even stop that now. If we get killed, we’re still going to expose them to everybody…civilian and military alike.”

“If the leaders are in the midst of their people, in a relatively unpopulated area, let me know,” the General said. “I’ll send a tactical nuke into the area. Take down my number.”

“No need, I have everything from your phone downloaded on the laptop. I’ll side load it to my phone later.”

The General chuckled. “Yeah, of course you do. General Walker and Major Hobbs were right about you.”

Jane came out of the bedroom.

“Good morning, General,” she said as she walked to the counter to get a cup of coffee.

“Jane, how are you? Nice to see you again.”

“I’m fine. Scared to death, but fine,” she said, sliding onto the dinette bench. Frank slid in next to her.

“So what now?” Jane asked.

“I’m going to start the encryption app running again,” Frank said. He punched some keys on his laptop, and then lowered the screen part way.

“No, I mean are we still taking off again?”

“I would if I were you guys,” the General said. “Get to where we talked about. Don’t tell me details. Now we can be in touch. Should I make these apps available to my inner circle? I mean would you mind?”

“You’ll know if they’re bad right away,” Frank said. “In fact, if they’re in town, we already know they’re okay. We’d have seen them show up on the long range app. Just keep this close to your vest. I wouldn’t go telling anybody in Washington DC.”

The General nodded. “I’ve got a big job to do. I’ve got to convince the folks in DC to do something about the flood of enemy fighters along I-70…without telling them how I know about it, of course.”

“Are there still a lot of bad guys in the government?” Jane asked.

“I’d sure like to take a stroll through the Pentagon with this app running,” the General replied.

“Why wait?” Frank asked. He used the iPad app to zoom into Washington DC. Some icons spread over the map. He got a grim look on his face, and showed it to General Hogan.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “That coup didn’t take out all the bad guys – that’s for sure. Look at the Pentagon.”

“At least there’s not thousands,” Frank said. “I see about forty.”

“In these circles, forty is really bad news,” the General said. “I’ve got an idea about the I-70 problem, though.”

“What?” Frank asked.