Going Home (52 page)

As soon as Sarge and the guys left the warehouse, Don jumped into his skiff and went home. Darrell, the guy in the red flannel, glared at him as he hopped into his boat. Don just ignored him; Darrell always had been a bit of an ass. He was certain that DHS would be sending someone around to look for their people, and he didn’t want to be there when they showed up. Don lived off Mullet Road, and as with most houses in this small town, he had both water and road access. He more often than not took his skiff to work—just didn’t have to fool with traffic laws that way.

Back at home, he grabbed a Natty Lite from the cooler on the kitchen floor; it was full of coolish water, the ice long since melted. Walking into the living room, he flopped down into his recliner and rocked it back and looked out the window at the river view. The property his house was on had been in his family for a long time. It was worth a lot; all the neighboring houses were far more opulent than his. Actually he was despised by some of them. His little “shack,” as they would call it, really pissed some of them off. But it was his, and he owned it outright. He had never been married and lived there alone. Don’s life revolved around the hardware store, fishing, Natty Lite, and his shows—
Jeopardy
and
Wheel
of
Fortune
in the evenings.

Just as Don suspected, DHS did send someone looking for their people, and from the response, they must have found something of the boat. It was later in the afternoon when several boats raced into the canals of Suwannee. DHS had set up a staging area at Cedar Key as they leapfrogged down the coast from Eglin AFB, and Suwannee was just a few miles by boat north of that. One of their primary goals was to get to the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant.

The DHS agents went through the harbor area of town, rounding people up. Anyone they saw was grabbed. Darrell wasted no time in volunteering what he knew. He took them inside the warehouse where they found puddles of blood and drag marks, and then they went back out to the pier. He was telling them how their agents were loaded onto their boat, and it was taken away by three men in camo uniforms—how they were armed and that they seemed to look to an older man for direction and called him Sarge. While Darrell was laying all of this out for them, a young man with a neat beard was fishing from the pier. He was questioned by the agents when they first arrived but was quickly dismissed because he seemed like a dimwit that wanted to talk about fishing. He was within earshot of where Darrell was spinning his yarn for the agents.

The agent that seemed to be in charge of the show asked Darrell who was in the warehouse, and he gladly told them it was Don Tuttle and where his house was. The bearded guy reeled up his line and collected his tackle box and started walking down the pier as the agent in charge began giving orders for his men to go find him. Darrell said he would be happy to take them to Don’s house. A small explosion at the end of the warehouse caused them all to jump and the agents to take cover. I fire quickly started as a result, and this got everyone’s attention.

Don was sitting in his chair working on his sixth beer when a boat came up to his house. He stood up and saw men in camo uniforms jump out and head toward his house. His beer hit the floor and began to run out into the carpet. He stood there slack-jawed for a moment before he turned and headed to the kitchen. Jerking open the backdoor, he was met by another camo’d figure. “Don’t kill me!” he shouted before the man hit him in the chest with a Taser.

Darrell led the agents to Don’s house; they deployed agents to the bank before they got there and gave them time to get in position around it before they came up from the river. In a coordinated assault, they hit the house. The rear security found the backdoor of the kitchen open and cautiously entered. The house was searched, and when Don wasn’t found, they brought Darrell up.

“Where else would he go?” the agent in charge asked.

“I don’t know. I assumed he came home. He doesn’t do anything else. He hasn’t got anywhere else to go,” Darrell replied, looking around the empty house.

“If you’re lying to me or trying to help him, you’re going to be in as much trouble as he is. We’re under martial law now. The rules are different,” the agent said.

Darrell got a look of fear on his face. “What? No, I’m not trying to help him! I told those men what they did was wrong, that we needed help from the government. I’m trying to help you,” Darrell pleaded.

“We’ll see.” Turning to one of the other agents, he ordered, “Cuff his ass up and bring him with us. Tear this place apart. I want anything you can find on this guy,” the lead agent said as he walked out of the house toward his boat tied up to Don’s dock.

As he went out, another agent cuffed a protesting Darrell and started for the door with him. Other agents began to search the house. An agent in the kitchen went through the cabinets, checked the fridge, and was pulling the drawers out and dumping their contents on the table. Finding nothing, he looked around and saw the cooler. Walking over, he kicked the lid open with his foot. The four one-pound blocks of C4 inside detonated with a thunderous explosion. It was overkill, blowing the walls out and dropping the roof of the front half of the house back onto what was left of the floor.

Darrell and the agent that was leading him away were blown into the river. The lead agent was just stepping onto his boat when the detonation occurred, and he was blown into the river as well. But as he was down at the water, he was left relatively unhurt. The other two men thrown into the river, however, were not so fortunate. The agent clamored up the dock, spitting out the brackish water of the canal. “God dammit!”

Don was lying in the bottom of a boat; there was a sack or something over his head. He couldn’t see. All he heard was the sound of the outboard and feel the boat as it maneuvered. He was terrified, not knowing who had him or where they were taking him. He felt the boat slow down, the outboard lowering in RPM until it was at idle. Then he heard the hull grind into the sand. Someone grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. The sack was pulled off his head; he squinted against the bright afternoon sun, and everything was a little out of focus.

“Sorry, we had to do it like this, Mr. Tuttle, but we didn’t have time to explain,” a beaded man in a camo uniform said to him.

“What do you want? Are you going to kill me?” Don asked.

“No, we’re not going to kill you. But those DHS guys might have, and we didn’t want you talking to them,” the bearded man replied.

Don looked around; another boat was there as well, and there were four other men, all in camo and all armed to the teeth, from the looks of them. He looked around at each of them. “Then what do you want with me?”

“Those guys are after some friends of ours, and we need to find them. You know where they are?” one of the others asked. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses, the kind that wrap around your head and make you look like a bug.

“You mean Linus?” he asked.

“Is that the one they called Sarge?” the bearded man asked.

“Yeah, them other two called him that.”

“Do you know the names of the other two?” the bug asked.

Don thought about that for a minute. “I think he called one of them Doc or something.”

The other men shared a look, and then the bearded man said, “Yeah, that’s them. Do you know where they are? It’s really important that we talk to them as soon as possible,” the bearded man replied.

Don sat there for a minute thinking about that. He had an idea where Linus’s camp was. They had talked often when Linus came down to buy supplies for it. He just wasn’t sure if these guys were on the up and up or not. “How do I know you’re friends of theirs?”

“You don’t; you just have trust us. We aren’t going to hurt you. If we were, we’d be asking these questions in an entirely different way,” the bug said.

“Gotta map?” Don quipped.

I slept until about four in the afternoon; it was the best sleep I ever had. Just being home, in my bed, the feeling was indescribable. When I woke up, I was alone. Mel and Little Bit were gone. I went out to the kitchen to find Danny and Bobbie there with Mel. They looked up as I came in. “Dude, took you long enough to get home,” Danny said.

“You have no idea,” I said as I shook his hand.

“Glad you made it back,” Bobbie said.

“Me too. I can’t describe the relief,” I said.

Mel came over and put her arm around my waist and laid her head on my shoulder. “Me too,” she said.

We stood around the kitchen and chatted for a while about how things were going. They caught me up on some of the local news—who was getting by, and who was starting to get a little weird. While we were talking, Mel went over to the fridge and came back with a glass of tea for me. “Oh, bless you, woman.” I took the Mason pint jar from her and drank it down in one long gulp. “Damn, that’s good.” She took the jar, refilled it, and handed it back to me. This time, I drank it a little slower.

“Damn, man, you act like you haven’t had that in a while,” Danny said with a laugh.

“Dude, I have drunk more water in the last couple of weeks than I did my entire life leading up to it,” I said as I took another long drink.

“Hey, Don told me there is supposed to be a radio address at six today. Do you have a radio?” Danny asked.

“Yeah, I have my little one. We’ll have to find it. Hey, Mel, where’s my pack?”

“It’s on the porch. Robert came by and got his four-wheeler earlier and put all your stuff on the porch,” she replied.

I went out and got my pack and brought it in. Opening it up, I dug around until I found the little pouch with the radio. While I was in there, I pulled the Yaesu out and set it and the antenna aside. Danny came over and picked it up. “This what you were talking on?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said.

“Where did you get it?” he asked, looking the radio over.

“Long story, but later, after the radio address, I’ll try and contact him,” I replied.

While we were waiting for the radio address, I decided I wanted a shower. If the solar system was working as it appeared to be, then the pump should be working. I looked over at Mel. “Does the shower work?”

“Yeah, but it’s cold water,” she said.

“Right now, I don’t care,” I replied as I headed back to the bedroom.

“Yeah, go; you need a shower. You stink to high heaven,” she said as I closed the bedroom door.

She was right; the water was cold. But I didn’t care; I took my time to wash my hair and lather up a rag and thoroughly wash my nasty ass from head to toe. Then the best part, I took out some clean clothes—pants, T-shirt, and socks. It felt so damn good to be in clean clothes; they felt good, smelled good, and looked good. The one thing I noticed was that they were all a little loose fitting. All that walking was good for me, although I can think of better diet and exercise programs.

Heading back into the kitchen, I was greeted with a catcall from Mel, “Oh, you look so much better,” she said and then walked up to me and smelled my chest. “And smell sooo much better,” she said with a smile. It was getting close to six, so I took the little radio out to the front porch and took it and the little wire antenna reel out. Unrolling the antenna, I threw it up into a wild plum tree and strung it back to the porch. I clipped it onto the extendable antenna on the radio and switched it on.

“What frequency is it supposed to be on?” I asked Danny.

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to go through it till we find it,” he replied.

At about six, I started to scan the FM bands, looking for a signal, but didn’t find anything. Switching to the AM, I started to go through them. It didn’t take long to find it. It took a few minutes of tweaking to get the signal dialed in. The broadcast was already under way by the time I got it tuned.

Under
martial
law.
We
must
take
these
extreme
measures
because
of
the
dire
situation
the
country
is
in.
Ignorance
of
the
provisions
of
martial
law
will
be
no
excuse
for
violating
any
of
its
provisions.
It
is
the
duty
of
all
citizens
hearing
this
broadcast
to
inform
their
fellow
citizens.
We
understand
there
are
not
that
many
functioning
radios
out
there
right
now.
Efforts
were
made
to
put
radios
into
population
centers.
However,
we
know
the
efforts
were
not
as
successful
as
we
would
have
liked.
Again,
that
is
why
it
is
important
to
pass
this
info
along
to
anyone
you
meet.

Under
martial
law
the
government
has
the
right
to
seize
certain
commodities.
As
a
result,
any
form
of
functioning
transportation
including
cars,
trucks,
boats,
aircraft,
and
trains
will
be
confiscated.
We
know
this
will
not
be
popular;
but
under
the
circumstances,
it
is
necessary.
If
you
are
approached
by
any
law
enforcement
entity,
you
must
surrender
your
vehicle
to
them.