By the author of Dear Diary: It’s Me, Jessica; The Second Year
In case you missed the last chapter, you can find it here.
Dear Diary,
It’s me, Jessica.
The drone seemed to be following the road from the West as it approached the bridge and Four Corners. It was light gray in color with a single, wide, triangle-like wing and a long, slender nose. It was hard to tell how big it was.
“I do not see any markings,” Carlos said as the drone passed overhead, looking through a small pair of folding binoculars. “I can see there is a downward-looking imagery port where the body or wing and the nose meet.”
“How big is it?” I asked.
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“Hard to tell without knowing how high it is or nothing to scale with. I would say six, maybe ten feet long.”
“Where did it come from?” Rae asked.
Both Carlos and I gave Rae a look.
“Right. Dumb question.”
“Well, it’s electric,” Carlos said as he looked back at the drone through the binoculars. “That means whoever it is has the means to not only control it over distance but can charge it too.”
The drone made two slow circles over Four Corners, then turned and headed back west, where it came.
Rae turned to me as it left, “You thinking what I am thinking?”
“Get back home. Tell Jack.”
“HAM Guy too.”
Entry two
“An electric-powered drone. Six to ten feet long. With possible real-time imagery capability,” HAM Guy repeated back to Rae and me. He paced back and forth, one arm crossed his chest, the other holding his chin, in front of the outdoor oven with a fire going as Mom was prepping to make bread.
Jack sat in a camp chair with one hand scratching Samson’s ears, the puppies napping at his feet. His eyes were thoughtful as he looked off into the distance. Still looking away, he said, “Cell towers have been down for nearly two years. Six to ten feet long, too small for satellite command, control, and communications. Electric powered, that much battery weight, has to be short range,” Jack looked at HAM Guy.
“Someone is in the neighborhood. The city. The suburbs.”
“Right. I will hit up City HAM Guy at noon.”
“Be careful. If they have drone capability, they might have the equivalent of a radio battalion. Monitoring frequencies, direction finding, if they are in the suburbs, even triangulation location capabilities. We don’t want to compromise City HAM Guy.”
“Already ahead of you, Jack. And if City HAM Guy is a HAM like me, he is thinking the same. He will be expecting me at noon and will keep it short and sweet. This is a bit of a coincidence with the West Coast HAMs going off the air.”
“Don’t have enough information to make even an educated guess. Not keen on guesses.”
“Right. What next?”
“Either they are focused on Four Corners, or they do not have the capability to control the drone past Four Corners to here,” Jack looked up at the sky. “But we should do what we can to keep our assets out of drone view if it comes our way. Might make things difficult. Some things, like our gardens and livestock, we will not be able to hide. The farms, impossible. They would be targets.”
“Right.”
“We need to go to Four Corners, namely you, to get an assessment.”
“Jack! I have never been to Four Corners! I have not left the community since the power went out! Well, even prior to that. I ordered a lot of Hot Pockets from Amazon.”
Jack stood up, walked over to HAM Guy, gave him a slap on the shoulder and a grin, “There is a first for everything. Be good for you. Expand your horizons. Besides, the food is better than a Hot Pocket.”
HAM Guy did not look happy.
Entry three
“Did you have to hit every single pot hole in the road,” HAM Guy asked as he got out of the pull-behind cart behind my horse and rubbed his rear end and legs.
“We agreed it was best if we got to Four Corners as quick as we could,” I snapped back at him as I hitched my horse up to the hitching posts to the one side of Sean’s shack. “And without regular road maintenance, potholes grow like weeds!”
“She has a point,” Jack said as he got out of the cart.
“Yeah, Jack! Take her side!”
“It is not a side if it is true.”
HAM Guy cocked his head to one side then looked up at the sky and sighed. “Yeah, I cannot argue with that. Sorry, Jessica.”
“No worries,” I replied with a grin.
HAM Guy looked around at the surroundings of Four Corners. He then pointed to a hill on the East side of North Old River Road,
“I need to get to the top of that hill.”
“You are going to want a good, hearty breakfast first,” Jack suggested, since we had not eaten before we left our community. “By the time you get to the top, you will feel like you ran a half-marathon. Coming down is not much better.”
HAM guy looked at the top of the hill, then the base and turned to say, “Right. What do you recommend?”
“This family makes a really good egg, potato, grilled onion, herb sausage frittata,” I suggested.
“Sounds great.”
“I will have breakfast, but hiking it up that hill is all you guys,” Rae said.
Carlos was eating his breakfast, watching us walk up. Rae introduced HAM guy and Jack. Jack and Carlos eyed each other as they shook hands. Jack looked down.
“Good-looking dog.”
“Her name is Kyrie.”
Jack let go of Carlos’s hand, knelt down, and held out a closed hand for Kyrie to smell. She sniffed half a dozen times, her tail began to wag, and then she licked the top of Jack’s hand.
“Whoa! She usually does not do that.”
“Most dogs tend to like me.
“Samson and the puppies?”
“Samson and the puppies,” Jack answered with a grin
Entry three
“They have an aerostat,” HAM Guy said, looking through Nate’s high-power binoculars. We were atop one of the tallest hills in Four Corners.
“What is an aerostat?” I asked.
“It is a big helium or hydrogen filled blimp looking ballon tethered to the command center on the ground. It can carry sensor packages, radio antennas, to a few hundred to a thousand or more feet off the ground to maintain command, control, and communications of a drone. Real-time imagery,” Carlos answered, looking through his own binoculars. “After about a dozen rocket attacks on our base, they brought one in.”
“Where was that?” Jack asked.
“Afghanistan.”
“Been there. Iraq, too.”
“Iraq was before my time.”
“Still. We have patrolled some of the same sand,” Jack grinned from behind his monocular.
“Yeah,” Carlos smiled from behind his binoculars.
“City HAM Guy was only up yesterday at noon long enough to say, ‘Got company. Stay off the air.’ and dropped off. Since then, I have been listening passively for any news of our new company. So far, nothing,” HAM Guy noted.
“That is a three-day hump by foot,” Jack noted, looking through his monocular at the aerostat. “If they have the kind of logistics to support putting that thing in the air, the drone, they likely have fuel and the means of transport.”
“Don’t like the sound of that,” Carlos said.
“I don’t either,” Jack agreed.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Jack lowered his monocular and looked at me.
“Get off this hill, get with Sean and Four Corners militia and plan a welcoming committee for . . . ‘company.’”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I responded.
“I don’t either,” Jack agreed.
Diary, I was expecting Jack to grin. He didn’t. I am not sure how I feel about that.
Entry four
“I was not expecting that,” Jack said flatly, looking through his monocular.
“Me either,” Carlos responded just as flatly through his binoculars.
Jack handed me his monocular.
We were lying on top of the barricade and chute at the bridge. On the far end of the bridge were three things.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Unmanned ground drones. With optics, likely audio, and armed with medium machine guns,” Jack answered. “We have a problem.”
About 1stMarineJarHead
1stMarineJarHead is not only a former Marine, but also a former EMT-B, Wilderness EMT (courtesy of NOLS), and volunteer firefighter.
He currently resides in the great white (i.e. snowy) Northeast with his wife and dogs. He raises chickens, rabbits, goats, occasionally hogs, cows and sometimes ducks. He grows various veggies and has a weird fondness for rutabagas. He enjoys reading, writing, cooking from scratch, making charcuterie, target shooting, and is currently expanding his woodworking skills.
One Response
With both Jack and Carlos’s combined military experience, it will be interesting to read what strategy they use. Looking forward to how the Four Corners militia deftly handles the new problem. Keep up the great writing.