“There’s one other thing down there I should tell you,” Burk revealed as they lay on their bedrolls the second night in the house. They both were stretched out at odd angles a few feet from the floor heater.
“What’s that?”
Burk’s soft, raspy voice was almost ghostly in the darkness. “In the back corner, under the kitchen, a section of the basement wall is cracked. The crack runs at an angle up from the floor and into the corner between the walls. It leaves a triangular section which is tipping inward at the top. Probably a root or something pushing against it.”
“Does it affect us?” Michael had been considering two rough plans at once. The first was to credibly threaten the professor, which would probably get the police interested. Then they had to incite a SWAT raid, probably kill or wound them with the explosive weapons, and somehow escape.
“Well, you know there’s a storm drain out in the alley. Looks like it’s a little lower than the floor of our basement. It would be a ton of work, but that might make a good opening for a crawl tunnel to get out of here unnoticed. That would be totally unexpected.”
Michael sat bolt upright. “Burk! You are a genius! Did you see any shovels at the thrift stores?”
Chapter 17
The next day they decided to simply wander the campus looking like students. If they needed a story, there would be a couple of different directions they might go, but they had to stay with it once they chose. Their favorite option was the most obvious one, a writer and his photographer. Carrying an old Pentax 35mm SLR, which looked alright but had a cracked main lens, Burk shadowed Michael as they roamed about the sprawling collection of historic buildings, with the occasional new structure here and there. They need not have bothered with the masquerade, as the huge student population proved the perfect cover. Aside from certain areas, like the Botany lab, there was virtually no place they couldn’t go. The greatest danger was from chatty girls trying to get their attention.
At one point, they passed a fenced off area where workmen were preparing a pit for some sort of concrete junction box. Down in the hole, someone was welding, using a fancy new generator. It was mounted on three wheels and small enough for one man to pull. The motor was incredibly quiet. Atop the concrete box was a cast-in steel tube, rather like an access shaft. Michael stared for awhile, then walked on, completely lost in thought. A couple of times he mumbled the word “diversion.”
Suddenly he turned to Burk, “How deep does the drain in the basement drop before it hits the sewer? Do you have some idea?”
“I’d guess four feet or so. Why?”
“I wonder if they lock up that equipment up at night... Burk, could you run that welder?”
“I guess so.” He knew better than to demand an immediate explanation of the fragments of thought left floating in the air. They also noted the lush heavy shrubbery all over the campus.
There was so much to do.
Suddenly, it seemed their month was about gone. Maybe another ten days and they’d have to be out for sure. Burk had ceased carrying the camera. They were tired from many late nights doing heavy physical work. Having slept late this morning, they both wondered if they’d be able to do anything at all. From the second floor of a newer classroom building, they could just see into the professor’s office. Watching awhile from the lounge chairs in front of the wall of glass, he was easily visible at his desk in the next building across an open grassy area. It was a mere two hundred meters or so. Sadly, neither of them could imagine how to fire without shattering the huge sheet of glass in front of them. Worse, the professor’s window, while tall, had a flower pot in it. They could just see his head and shoulders.
As they walked outside, Michael was joking about using a baseball bat to knock a grenade up by the window. Suddenly he froze, staring at the backside of the building they had just left. In the parking lot was a tar heater, such as one towed behind trucks. It was smoking, producing a dull roar as the heating unit kept a quarter-ton of tar in a molten liquid state. The men were dispensing tar from a valve into steel five-gallon buckets. These they placed each on a lightweight lift, with a small cage that shot quickly and smoothly up a track resembling a ladder to the edge of the flat roof. Burk spoke up, “Looks like they just got started on the job. That lift can carry people, too. If you look, there’s no ladder; the guys on the roof rode up the lift one at a time. While its easier work up there this time of year, you have to be really quick with that tar. It hardens in just a few minutes on really cold days. Since we had the warm front move in, I’d guess they have as much as ten minutes once the bucket gets to the top.”
He glanced at Michael, and realized what he saw wasn’t the look of simple curiosity. Then it hit him. The roofing job would take at least a week, and he doubted the equipment would be moved after dark. Also, this was the start of finals week, and the professor would be in his office late every night.
Chapter 18
Posted on several campus bulletin boards there was a short threatening statement. It demanded a certain professor immediately resign his seat on the federal advisory board for grants and policy regarding improvements in municipal police forces. The threat promised if he failed to comply, he would not survive Christmas Break. The post was made from an IP address in Pakistan. There was a sort of manifesto attached:
The people have had enough. It stops now. Back off and leave us alone. Those of you eating our tax dollars: Have you forgotten the term “public servant” means what it says? You serve us, not herd us. The people are supposed to be the government.
That hasn’t been true in several generations, at least. The ruling elite are a closed group who only pretend to represent our interests. Instead, they rule only to enrich and further empower themselves, pushing us farther into the dust. The most ubiquitous symbol of this upside down state of affairs is the militarization of the civilian police. In effect, they are being made an occupying army, serving some other nation. In protecting the governing elite alone, they scarcely hesitate to destroy our lives, when they don’t kill us outright.
No more. We are striking back. Whoever promotes empowering the police state, whoever promotes the increasing militarization of police forces, and any police officer treating average citizens with contempt, you are our enemy. We are declaring war. You have been warned. The last thing you’ll see is our angry faces.
“Won’t that make the campus security hang around him a lot?” Burk asked.
“Yep. They’ll have very close to him because our threat falsely suggests close quarters violence. We want them there.”
“Won’t that make it risky for me? I’m ready to shoot this guy, but even at that distance, they’ll have time to catch me before I get off the roof. I’m not ready to fight off a bunch of rent-a-cops to get away.”
Michael grinned, “You won’t have to. We just want them clustered around the professor’s office building so we know where they are, and can’t surprise us. When the grenade goes off in the parking lot next to his car, they’ll come running. If any of them stay, I’ll slingshot another closer to his office. With all those blind hedges they’ll be too busy just trying to figure out where the action is, much less where it’s coming from. Even if we don’t get him, we’ve accomplished half the objective with the mere threat. His death just extends the message, which is by far the most important thing, so you can miss if you like.
“The city police are the real target. You know they’ve been watching this house lately expecting rowdy parties, and someone’s bound to see us come home right after all the commotion. This place is primed for major fireworks, and the tunnel is finished. Even if everything we’ve planned fails and no one gets hurt, the message won’t be ignored.”
Chapter 19
Naturally the professor insisted campus life continue as normal, and groused about too many campus officers crowding around him. Local police officials were reminded they had no jurisdiction until there was a real emergency. They tried placing plain clothes officers supposed
ly appearing inconspicuous among the students, but doing a poor job of blending. Several were nearly arrested by the campus security; this was their turf and they were touchy about it. The chief threw up his hands and ordered city patrol cars to stay close to the campus.
The two police officers in one patrol car a block off the sprawling campus on the south side, farthest from the action, were almost asleep. Suddenly the radio sounded an emergency tone, followed by an urgent broadcast alert. “All units, all units: Respond to explosion and gunfire on north college campus. Also, be on the lookout for two male suspects fleeing the scene on foot...” The rest was drowned out by the roar of the engine and ear-shattering twitter of the electronic siren as they drove away.
At the main entrance to the campus, they were directed to turn back out onto the street running down the east side of the campus, and take up a position watching to see if anyone came out of the small forest growing around the lake toward the south end of the campus. They stopped where the trees began, backed the car off the road, and turned so their headlights shone straight down the edge of pavement. They rolled the windows down so they could direct the spotlights while standing outside. They had been told other patrols were swarming the entire campus area because the emergency permitted it. On the radio, they heard about a professor removed by ambulance, pronounced dead at the scene from a gunshot wound. So this was at least a homicide. A few minutes later they were listening intently to a description of the two suspects who had been seen wandering the campus over the past month.
What they did not hear was the squish of wet shoes coming up behind them. They were completely unable to explain later that night, while the paramedics were patching them up, how they had been beaten senseless after being attacked from behind. The muddy footprints matched a pair of tracks coming out of the lake. Who would swim a hundred yards across a lake in winter?
So it was the next day, while the feds were tearing apart the remains of the old house, Michael was thinking to himself: Yep, city buses aren’t too bad. This one would take them far south of the city to an industrial park. There was a collection of plants turning out various products. The next run would be crowded with workers, but this sunrise shuttle, the first of the day, was only sparsely populated. They would have breakfast at the convenience store deli, then slip out and start their long hike across the fields back to the tree house in the hollow.
It was necessary to split up for awhile from there. The descriptions of them issued to the press were pretty vague, but they were taking no chances. Burk was pretty sure he could pass along through the hobo camps unnoticed. Michael would drive down to Mexico for awhile. Who knows? Maybe he could spot the ratty old bob-tailed truck hauling cocaine back across the Southwest, and follow him home. After Christmas and New Year’s, they would both try to meet at the orchard in northern California. Michael was going to look for a small camper to put on the truck. It would make it harder to hide, but easier to live in year-round. By then, they’d know if there were more targets, or if they had already done all they could.
Maybe – just maybe – a few policemen would hesitate before humiliating some random citizen minding his own business.
Meanwhile, it would some years yet when, in yet another round of renovations, workmen would find a badly corroded, inexpensive Chinese-made rifle and scope at the bottom of a sewer vent pipe in one of the campus buildings.
Part 2: Coming Home
Chapter 20
“Aqui, Ernesto – Plexiglas,” Michael pointed into the bed of his pickup. The hand-crafted camper shell was almost finished, lacking only windows for the frames. It might have indeed been possible to find a large sheet of the hard clear plastic in Juarez, but he wanted that heavier grade stuff he spotted in El Paso on one of his shopping trips.
The elderly man pulled at the sheet and carried it carefully into his shop, which was actually just a lean-to on his house. It was open on the long side, but with a roof. He clamped the sheet to a frame and began meticulously marking it for the various odd windows in the camper shell. Michael had no idea where Ernesto found the window frames, but assumed they were just more of the kind of stuff the amazing man had scavenged from any number of dumps. He was pretty sure none of it was stolen, since the frames all had no more than a few shards of broken glass hanging in them. Michael decided Plexiglas was cheaper, and probably better for his use.
Any day now, the camper would be finished. Then he would mount it on his old pickup. Of course, this would remove his last excuse for staying here on the hillside above Ciudad Juarez. He’d have to head back to California.
It had been a marvelous vacation, and the hardest work he’d ever done. It was more labor than even the digging under the little house back up north. He tried not to think too much about that. Though news reports had never mentioned the SWAT Team, only an explosion and fire, he was pretty sure at least a couple of the officers had died. Also, reports hadn’t tied the professor’s death with the explosion. In fact, they never even called it an assassination.
Michael fastened his tool belt and shifted it to a more comfortable place on his hips. The nails in the open pouches jingled merrily, a sound he now thought of as almost music. That was due to something one of the very creative college girls on the first mission team had done. She was sitting on the bare planks of a new roof during a lunch break one day, and began shaking her own nail pouch, in a very engaging rhythm. To this, another student added a gentle hammer tapping on a loose board, producing another tone. Then a couple more students joined in, and the girl made up a little chorus about work as worship.
He’d never forget that group, a small Christian college choir taking a mission trip on their Christmas break from classes. The little community benefiting from this work did their best to put on a real celebration for their guests, and the simplicity of love made it seem lavish. There was more than one kind of love, too. Michael tried to stay away from Juanita, the young widow who served as one of the church cooks. He was pretty sure she had eyes for him. As he climbed a ladder to yet another roof in the same series of new homes, tears came to his eyes. He was the only Anglo on the building site today. There was another American, a volunteer from the big Baptist church over in El Paso, who was the master carpenter and instructor. That man had been born not too far from these houses. He was a local boy who made it big, got his legal citizenship in the US, them came back to help lift others.
So it was several days later, Ernesto had finished mounting the exceedingly lightweight custom-built camper. He signaled Michael up on the roof, and indicated with a flourish of his hands the job was done; it was worth more to Michael than he could afford to pay the man, but still more than what Ernesto could make on other projects. Wiping a tear, Michael drove a nail through the plank into the frame below, in three practiced strokes. He so wanted to stay, but he couldn’t. This was the last nail on that day. Something deep inside told him this was the moment, time to go.
The leather belt held a good framing hammer, flat steel nail puller, wide locking measuring tape, a couple of carpenter’s pencils, small level, and a few other odd tools, along with the nails. Holding the tool belt in his hand, he considered a moment, then called the teenage boy over. The young man had hung around most days, helping with odd tasks, such as fetching small pieces, helping to hold something large against the gusty winds, or whatever else was needed. He was barefoot, gaunt, and ate the free lunch like it was his only meal. He didn’t speak much, but sang rather well the Spanish hymns often shared to brighten the work days.
Michael never knew his name, and simply called him Hermanito, “little brother.” Deciding it didn’t really matter if the boy knew how to use the tools, that he might sell them for food, he decided to give it a chance. He handed the belt to him and quickly got into his truck. As he drove away, a look in his side mirror showed the boy, standing dumbstruck, looking back and forth between the belt and the rear of the departing little truck and camper. As he rounded the corner, Michael was sure he saw
the boy wrap it around his waist and run toward the half-finished house.
Chapter 21
He must have driven this way into El Paso a dozen times in the past five weeks. This time he would keep going. He crossed the free bridge, and at the junction with I-10 he saw another small pickup similar to his, waiting at the light. It took his mind back. As he crossed the double intersection and onto the Interstate westbound, he could almost capture the feeling of fear, weariness, and bewilderment trying to find the route over the border.
The day he left the little copse with the tree house, and his good friend Burk, he had managed to get all the way to Monahans in the Permian Basin. The relatively warm desert air, awash in the smell of raw petroleum, was quite a change to the previous night. He and Burk had arrived at the cache of dry clothing nearly frozen after their confrontation with the police patrol watching for them. Though the city there had been in a warm spell, it meant simply it didn’t quite freeze at night. The basement was warm enough, where they waited for the SWAT raid to start. The entrance to the tunnel was okay, too, but the storm drain was cold. By comparison, the park at Monahans was quite seasonable. He packed the coat away that next morning, and hadn’t seen it since. It had been fairly cool the next morning as he crossed the high ridges between Pecos and El Paso, but even with the high elevation of the Rio Grande Valley there, it remained fairly warm the whole five weeks in Juarez.
He originally had planned to drive all the way down to Chihuahua, maybe visit Copper Canyon. For some reason, with a bad wreck in the main intersection just across the bridge, and still driven by fear, he found that right turn rather inviting. Just a block down, he caught up with the bus load of college students, stopped for traffic at a corner. Having seen the squalor of Mexican cities before, he was mesmerized more by the sign on the back naming their college, and by the young adults in the back windows, just a few years younger than he. Overcome by curiosity, he followed them. When they climbed the hillside into the real gritty slums, he stayed with them. They stopped in front of a little mission church. After watching them a moment, he realized what it was. There was a couple of small building foundations, and some of the students carried carpentry tools as they unloaded their luggage.