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.
HAM Guy sent his coded message to City HAM Guy at noon. Surprisingly, City HAM Guy immediately responded, “Check, roger. Jay will meet you for trade, same time, same place tomorrow. Out.”
HAM Guy took off his headphones, looking at me questioningly,
“Was there a meet-up for trade for tomorrow?” he asked.
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“Not that I know of. Has to be something else. I will tell Jack.”
“That is a bit of good news,” Jack said, glancing at Carlos after I passed the word from the City HAM guy. “We were just talking about making a trip to the city to get some eyes on what we’re dealing with. If ‘Jay’ is in fact Jamal, which I suspect it is, then maybe he wants to meet up to trade information. Maybe we can use where his group is holed up as a base of operations.”
“Going to have to be careful getting close to the city with that aerostat. Depending on the optics packages it has on it, it could see a good ways off. And then there is the drone,” Carlos warned.
“If Jamal wants to meet up tomorrow, he must have found a way to get around the city without being seen. Okay. If we are going to make the trip, we might as well go as if we decided to go all the way to the city itself.”
“How many do you want to take?” Carlos asked.
“Well, if what City HAM Guy said about a ‘big dog’ is an APC, plus the two that returned makes three, no way we are going up against those head to head. When your enemy is large and unwieldy, be small and nimble. A squad, plus you, me, and Jessica.”
“You want to take her?”
“Hey!” I exclaimed.
“Jessica is the only person I know around here who can keep up with me at a run. Unless you can do a sub-twenty-minute five-kilometer run? And she is a good shot and good in a firefight.”
“Whoa! You two got me beat by about five minutes. Running never was my thing, even in the Marines. I have not run seriously since I got out.”
“Okay, we,” Jack nodded toward me, “have made this trip before. There is a brook that runs parallel to the road back in the woods. So, water is not a problem. We will have to bring our food. Dried and as calorie-dense as possible. Jamal may be able to resupply us. Otherwise, we hunt and forage. I will pick out the guys I want with us, then start gathering the supplies we will need. Then we set out, get a few hours on the road before we have to make camp for the night. Then we hump it to the meeting point at dawn on the road for as long as we can before the aerostat can see us.”
Entry two
We just arrived at the meeting point when Jamal and two of his guys came out of the treeline, surprising everyone, including Jack.
“Whoa! Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you!” Jamal said, putting his hands partially up in mock surrender.
“Sorry too,” Jack said, lowering his rifle. “I am used to us being the first ones here.”
“We just got here half an hour or so ago. Yesterday morning we heard several vehicles drive by down the block from our place. I figured something was up. Told City HAM Guy to contact your group for a meet-up today to compare notes.”
Jack ordered us to take a lunch and water break.
Everyone was sitting on the ground, eating what they had out of their packs or sipping water. Jack told Jamal and his men everything that had happened.
Then it was Jamal’s turn.
“They showed up a little over a week ago in the afternoon. Even where we are now, hard to miss the sounds of that many vehicles on the move. Since we moved, we have not ventured back into the city, but I wanted to see who these guys were and if they were friendly or not. They are not. When they got to one of the parks where some of the people were growing food, they started shooting in all directions from those big armored vehicles with machine guns. Not that anyone was out. When these guys showed up, most people ran, rightfully so, I would say.”
“So much for the welcome mat,” Carlos said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Jamal nodded. “Whoever they are, they are organized. They brought their own fencing with razor wire to set up a good-sized perimeter, big enough for four of these big weird-looking tents, all the vehicles, and space in between. Put up weird pole-like towers at each of the four corners with two machine guns each and cameras on top. And a dozen guys did it in about an hour.”
Jack and Carlos looked at each other.
“Well organized,” Jack said.
“And disciplined,” Carlos finished.
They both looked back at Jamal and then said at the same time, “Proceed.”
Jamal furrowed his brow and looked at them questioningly.
“The two of you married or something?”
“No,” I answered. “They were both in the Marines. They practically share the same brain. Besides, Rae,” I put more than a little emphasis on ‘Rae,’ “Is more Jack’s speed. Isn’t she Jack?”
Jack actually blushed. That was a first.
“Jessica, you are a bad, bad woman,” Jack said, but grinned.
I just smiled sweetly back and popped another piece of lard bread in my mouth.
“Riiigght,” Jamal said, smiling back at Jack. A few others from our group, who knew about Jack and Rae, chuckled.
“Anyways,” Jamal continued, “They had this weird-looking eighteen-wheeler in the middle. The rig and a trailer chassis with two big tanks at the front and two huge rolls of heavy cable in the middle. They laid out this massive what we thought was a tarp and began filling it with what I am guessing was helium from the tanks. It took them that night and part of the next day to fill it. By the afternoon, they had this massive, weird-shaped blimp balloon hovering about fifty feet off the ground with the big cable attached to the bottom of it. One of our guys who worked as a defense contractor said it was an aerostat. Could have cameras, night vision, thermal, and even radio equipment on it for surveillance and communications.”
“Your contractor friend was not wrong,” Jack said gravely. “How did you avoid being seen?”
“The sewers.”
“The stench must be awful,” Carlos said with a look of disgust.
“No running water to flush the toilets in two years. No one has really used them. All the rain over two years has basically flushed the sewers out. There is still a hint of the stench, but not so bad as to make those with some control puke. We just have to be careful of where we come in and out of the sewers to make sure they cannot see us, especially with that aerostat thing up in the air.”
“Yeah. From the top of one of the hills, we can see it on the horizon. We think it is controlling the drone,” I said.
“Yeah. Between the aerostat and the drone, it makes it really hard for us to scavenge. We do not want them knowing where our base is. Those in the city itself, not sure how they are trading. I am guessing they are trading inside of buildings, running quick in between to try to not be seen.”
“Mind if we come and take a look for ourselves?” Jack asked.
“I was hoping you would.”
“Okay, let’s get moving,” Jack said as he and the rest of us got up, put on our packs, and slung our rifles to move out.
Entry three
We were able to use the treeline on the North side of the road to hide us from the aerostat allowing us to make good time. It was when we had to turn north that we had to get creative, using buildings to stay hidden. But once we got into the neighborhood where Jamal and his group’s base was, it was into the sewers we went.
Okay. I must not have a strong sense of ‘with some control not to puke,’ as Jamal put it. It took almost everything I had not to puke in the sewer system. If the sewer system was not ‘flushed out,’ I would not have made it past the manhole cover.
No one else seemed to have problems.
We came out of the sewer right behind the firehouse that was their base. It was tall enough, and the aerostat was still far enough into the city; we stayed out of sight.
Once introductions were made, our guys settled in, offering to take watch or help out where they could.
Jack, Carlos, Jamal, and I went back into the sewer to get a closer look.
The sewer system brought us out into the basement and utility section of a large commercial building overlooking the park where the invaders set up their base. To get a better view, we climbed up to the sixth floor.
After a minute, Jack handed his monocular to me and said,
“What do you see?”
As I looked, I responded, “A large compound at the edge of the park. Most of it is in the park, but the one side with what looks like an entrance is partially in the road. It is surrounded by a fence with razor wire at the base and the top. There are four pole towers at each corner of the perimeter, each with what looks like two medium machine guns. Three cameras on the top, each looking outward like the cameras on the land drones we saw at Four Corners.
“On the inside of the fence, three APCs with heavy and medium machine guns pointed outward. They are positioned on three sides closest to the buildings surrounding the park, with one at the entrance. Several support vehicles near the fence. The land drone carrier. Four of those pull-behind tankers. I can see what looks like two pull-behind generators in the middle of the DRASH tents. There are what look like cables coming from them and going into the DRASH tents. Next to the DRASH tents and in the middle of the compound, the eighteen-wheel rig and trailer chassis with two drums, one empty, the other with some heavy cable on it. One length of the cable going toward one of the DRASH tents. The rest of the cable,” I lowered the monocular and looked out the window, “is going up to the aerostat.”
“The heavy cable is to tether the aerostat to the ground and is actually all the communications cables for the cameras and radios up in the aerostat. Then sheathed all into one heavy cable,” Jack explained as he and the others all looked up at the aerostat way above them. “The trailer chassis transports the aerostat when it is deflated, and the cable drums welded to the frame ground it. If you look again, there are heavy ropes attached to the chassis and heavy grounding stakes around the trailer chassis to keep it from moving if the winds are strong up there. Things could have been interesting during that storm the other night, depending on how the winds came through the city. Even close to the ground, something that big moving around in strong winds would be a real hazard.”
Looking back through the monocular, “I think I found the aerial drone. It is on some kind of rail that is pointing up at about a forty-five degree angle, just behind the trailer chassis.”
“Yeah,” Jamal answered. “We saw them launch it once. They attach a small rocket to the rear end of the drone and launch it off the rail into the air. After a hundred feet or so, the rocket shuts down and falls off while the propeller keeps it going. They retrieve the drone by putting up what looks like a big square net made out of bungee cords between two tall poles and just glide it into the net.”
“Simple but effective,” Carlos nodded.
“Military planes and helicopters, they have markings like their flags or branches of the military on them, right?” I asked.
“Correct,” Jack answered.
“The drone does not have any markings like that.” I panned around the base with the monocular. “The APCs, the support vehicles, they don’t either. And don’t bases usually have their flag displayed somewhere?”
“Correct,” Jack said again. “I noticed the same thing.”
“So did we,” Jamal agreed.
“I think we have seen enough. Let’s head back and determine what is next,” Jack said.
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
never long enough…drip, drip, drip is agonizing