Anna's Mystery Plan Pt. 04

Closing with Talia, I whispered, "Take Chelsea and Carolyn back and get ready to fight. Sophie and I will stay with them."

She gave an unhappy nod and disappeared with the other two. Sophie and I retreated into a thicket and watched. I told myself it was stupid to come out here without weapons, and wondered what a party of three was all about. There could be others coming from different directions. I hoped Talia had sent an alert to Anna. If violence was planned, she needed to know.

Touching foreheads with Sophie, I told her we would let the intruders go by, so as to have the advantage of flanking them if trouble developed.

They were very good. Moving past in total silence. Without the night glasses, Sophie and I would not have detected them. Just as we were about to follow, there was a tremendous explosion and fiery light to our rear and west. If not for the thicket, we would have been seen as they turned and scrambled in the direction of the blast. I wondered if this was a mistake on the attack team's part, or perhaps something to do with Anna. More explosions illuminated the returning bodies when they turned and dashed for the house. I could hear, "Attack, Attack!" from where we crouched.

Something flashed in my head and I broadcast as hard as I could, "Incoming! Use the rocket launcher!"

Seconds passed before a spectacular blast against a tree happened in front of us, within feet of the charging bodies, which crumpled to the ground.

Staying at the edge of the thicket, Sophie and I waited. The fire to our rear was dying down, and the bodies in front were not moving. My walkie-talkie squealed and a voice asked, "Ok out there?"

I keyed the mike and answered "Yes. You got the three attackers."

"Good. Come in. We are talking to Anna."

I wasn't used to seeing dead bodies covered in blood. Sophie said, "We need to make sure they are dead." She had more toughness than I suspected, kneeling in the gore and feeling for a pulse. Three times and no results. We walked on in, leaving them in the brush. Three lumps in the arriving daylight.

We approached the edge of the patio and a door opened. A submachine gun poked out, followed by Chelsea's body. She looked grim and so did we. "That was an aerial rocket that took their vehicles out. Anna authorized it as soon as their IR signature showed up on her surveillance display. Talia is getting directions for moving to another location."

Talia and Carolyn came out, unsmiling. "We are going north and east. I have directions. But first, Anna says we have to sanitize this place before the police arrive. Someone will have seen the flames or heard the blast. She says we have to strip the bodies naked and cover them with leaves and brush. Everything on them comes with us for analysis."

I took a deep breath and said, "I need a volunteer to come with me. Bring a couple contractor bags. The others start cleaning the house. Wipe down. We want to leave as few prints of all the folks who have been here as possible."

Talia looked around, nodded, and said, "I'll be with you in a minute."

The three attackers were in American camo gear. The kind you buy in hunting shops. Everything was new. They were three young males, all dark skinned, with scraggly beards. They had bled to death quickly from multiple shrapnel wounds. I hoped, for some reason, that they had not regained consciousness. I struggled to get boots and clothes off dead bodies, which wasn't easy. Probably intended to kill us, if their attack had succeeded.

We separated their ammo vests, with grenades attached, from the rest of the gear. There were also three machine guns, which didn't look U.S. "You recognize those?" I asked Talia. She shook her head and unloaded the magazines.

We needed to hurry, so while Talia dragged the garbage bags away, I turned them face down, as gently as I could, and covered the bloody corpses with branches and dry leaves. Walking to the house, it occurred to me that Anna would not have put us in a firefight if she had known this was coming. Which meant her plans weren't as perfect as they had seemed earlier. Some opponent was throwing his or her weight around, although why taking out an almost amateur group such as ours was a mystery. Talia and I needed a private conversation as soon as possible. Almost as soon as the thought went through my mind I realized it was stupid. With two PhD's and a long time agent in the group, why try to hide anything?

There were four vehicles. After discussion, Chelsea put one of the older autos in her makeshift garage, hanging the keys on an inconspicuous nail. It didn't matter what happened to it.

I had a weak plan for evading pursuit. Better than nothing, but we weren't going to invest much time in it. We gathered around the cars with glances at the house, which was probably not going to survive the next few days. In the early slanting sunlight, with cottonwoods in the background, it looked sad. Which was the whole idea, actually.

Looking at a Google map on Talia's iPad, I traced three routes north, only one of them asphalt.

Chelsea was determined to drive her rebuilt pickup, whose back was filled with bags of supplies and water.

"You take Carolyn and find shade ten miles or so up the blacktop road. See if you can duck under some cover from an overhead plane or satellite. If none of the rest of us get there in six hours, drive straight to Trona and contact Anna. If you are attacked, put out the emergency call to her and defend yourselves." No one looked happy at any of that.

"Sophie, you go with Talia along this track. Wait for me in the junipers right here. I am taking the old car to that draw. There will be tire marks in the sand. It is maybe three miles to your stopping place and I will get there as fast as I can without leaving obvious tracks. Then we angle off here to the blacktop. Same contingency as with Chelsea, but don't wait more than ninety minutes."

Looking at Talia, I hesitated and said, "I think the bags go with you. Any trouble and jettison them."

I watched the truck and the hot rod leave, unhappy females on board. The ancient sedan started out fine, but didn't like the sandy offroad track at all. I gunned it down the ruts, knowing it would be stuck if I let it stop. At twenty miles an hour, I almost missed the dip where the draw angled off but swerved into it at the last moment and came to a breathless stop a hundred yards in. There was a puny upholstery brush in the back seat which I used to wipe out my sneaker tracks after I let them wander to the east away from the car. Hopping from rock to hardpan to rock, I made good progress to the west. The brush was low, and I knew any airborne surveillance would likely pick me up in a hurry. I repeated to myself that some diversion was better than none. The sun was well up and I looked off to the southwest, wondering how much attention the blast was getting, and from whom.

Suddenly, there were bodies rising out of the sand, guns trained on me. "Hands up." They were in a perfect V, so that the bursts that killed me didn't hit each other.

"Is this what is called a hot reception?"

"Buster, you are road kill, just walkin' in here like 'dat."

I went for careful kisses and got hot ones. "Let's get out of here."

We almost missed Chelsea, except for a small hand wave next to a tree trunk. Sophie hollered, "That's them." Talia did a one-eighty at speed and dove into the shade, dust flying.

Chelsea and Talia were hugging and high fiving. "Shit, girl, you drive that like it's Formula 1."

We stood in a circle, sucking water and trying to shed fear.

"Ok. so far, so good. Talia, what did Anna tell us to do?"

"She said to head to a ghost town called Darwin, on the west side of Death Valley. One of the shacks is actually a safe house. Go there and checkin with her. Try not to be followed."

(Cont'd in Part 5 - Meeting Anna)