Fiction 2, Chapters 15 & 16
Copyright © 1992
Chapter 15
"As fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour
When it lies starkly in the traveller's bones."
Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare.
The first thing to set up was the alarm on the outer perimeter.
The central station could handle as many as 256 remote sensors. Each sensor had a DIP switch set to transmit a special binary code, when it was turned on by some event. The code told the central station which remote unit was doing the squealing. Usually, a map of the property is drawn if there are a big bunch of sensors. Otherwise, a list of the locations __like '10 - Master bedroom'__ is sufficient.
I would be using forty sensors, ten in each quadrant. It would be easy enough to keep oriented.
The remote sensors were almost all of the magnetic door and window type. Open the door, and you pull the magnet away, allowing the spring to close a switch. In these remotes, it activates a miniature radio transmitter that says to the central unit, "It's me, number eight; I'm wet and hungry and lonesome."
I nailed a switch/radio unit to a tree at ankle-height, then tied the end of some black button thread through one of the screw holes in the magnet unit, and placed it against the switch. It stuck to it, of course, and would keep the switch open until the thread would be tripped and pull it away.
The thread unwound as I walked around the perimeter, about two thousand feet. On the average of every fifty feet, I tied off the thread and installed another sensor. Somebody on the opposition might be too smart to set it off __not all of them though__ and they would come together.
The driveway, which was about seventy-five feet long, I covered with two remote infra-red sensors.
First, the extra shotgun shells. It took about a minute each to pry the plastic canister of buckshot out of one hundred shells, -four spares for shoddy workmanship- and then plug each shell with a small section of candle, cut up with a jig saw.
I had purchased a master case of replacement 12-volt auto cigarette lighters; not the sockets, just the plugs. Clipping the elements loose, I soldered the red wire of a six-foot length of twisted-pair wire to the center contact of each spiral heat element, and the black wire to the end of the outer edge.
Each heat element butted up against the back of a shotgun shell, and then both were shoved into a pipe with epoxy.
I don't know exactly what to call them: How about fireworks?
Next the lights! I disconnected the solar panels, and charged up the Ni-cad batteries in the house.
While the batteries were charging, I wired one of the remote relays that was set to "0," in series with the photo-electric controller for each lamp. That electric-eye keeps them off during the day, when they're useless. Two each of the fireworks were wired to each lamp with different resisters so they'd go off separately.
The remaining fireworks were hooked up to the remaining remote relays, powered by the lantern batteries. They were coded "1" through "24."
By this time it was almost dawn, so I got some sleep.
Around noon, I started to install the lights and fireworks. I wanted to break off when it got dark, so I only had about half of them finished. I was working quickly at inserting batteries, nailing the lamps and the copper pipe clamps holding the fireworks to tree trunks on a five hundred foot perimeter surrounding the cottages, except for the driveway. Two more lamps were installed to cover the driveway __and as an afterthought__ I left the fireworks off those two. None would light up before darkness fell or until I pressed the activator, and they detected a large, warm and moving body.
That night, I watched television and relaxed while I was making caltrops.
The next morning I finished installing the lamps and fireworks. Cottage number one had one whole bedroom filled with cardboard, styrofoam, warranty cards and completely ignored instruction booklets. I didn't think any of the warranties would be honored.
The rest was strictly low-tech.
In between the inner and outer perimeters, the tear gas grenades were set at ankle level. I used clear packing tape from a tape gun to mount the cans to bushes. The handle had already been bound to each can with electrical tape. After that, a black shoelace served to tie a slipknot holding the handle and can body together.
More button thread was tied to the slip end of the lace, and carefully unreeled very tautly just above ground level, out about ten feet to another bush at the perimeter, then along the perimeter about twenty-five feet. It turned a corner again around a third bush, coming in again about ten feet to a fourth bush where I tied it off, and installed the next grenade.
When I finished the circuit, I went back around with a scissors. If the slipknot was still in place, I removed the pin and snipped the electric tape to activate the trip wire. Three had to be retied, first.
God, I was tired: hot, soaking wet with sweat, and tired! It was time for a hot shower. There was no way I could face up to the kind of company I expected, at least not that night. I watched more tube and made more caltrops.
What are caltrops? In medieval times, they were used to stop men on foot and horses. The defensive weapons were usually shaped as a steel ball with spikes protruding in four directions. No matter which side was up, there were always three spikes on the ground holding one spike straight up, possibly two or three inches high.
No matter how hard I searched, I would be hard put to find those in stock. So, the twenty-penny nails would have to serve.
What you do, is get a vise and bend the nail three times in two different planes with a light sledgehammer. Cut the head off with a bolt cutters and Voila! The cutters leave a sharp chisel-point on the cut end of the nail. However you throw it on the ground, one sharp end or the other usually sticks up. But if one of the bends sticks up instead, the point will still stab the unwary trodder as soon as he steps on the bend. That's a caltrop.
They would be just inside the tear gas perimeter by about six feet. My night's sleep was well earned by then. What a pity that I didn't get much.
* * * * * * * * * *
-Mishlietu lee is nijesh mishlietu culla for myjielle-
Going to bed is not always going to sleep for me.
* * * * * * * * * *
There was a bit of bitching and moaning going north to Houston, internal as well as external.
To foster some sense of __not community__ no, __hierarchy was it__ the Chairman sat in front, next to Garth. It was the only way to travel with Weller and his spiritual clones, and still remain aloof. If only the Mercedes had allowed Garth and the creature and his goons to sit in the front __four across__ it would have been more in keeping with their respective stations.
Still, sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the common good.
He still couldn't stop himself from commenting __once an hour on the average__ about the loss of three automobiles at one shot, two of them totalled. And now the Mexican was unaccounted for, along with his car.
They would have to stay over the next day since it would take at least that long to set up a date for the bitch, and that would give Weller a chance to recruit some more help and pick up some additional vehicles. They'd need three more plus whatever the recruits would be driving.
"There's no sense," the Chairman mused, "in letting them make the same mistake twice."
"What, sir?"
"Nothing!" he barked. "Keep your mind on your driving, Garth."
Chapter 16
"For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!"
Dreamland, Edgar Allan Poe.
"What do ya want, Richard?"
It was softly said. We were in a twilight land, a flat land where there were no discernable colors. My eyes looked for something familiar as they followed a butterfly I couldn't quite see. I had to turn around a time and a half before I found her.
It was Roxanne and she was in a green raincoat, carrying a green umbrella. I explained that I had been trying to find her. There was no sound to my voice but I knew she understood me.
"What about mah boy?" Her voice sounded like the lonesome wail of a train across the valley.
That's right: It was her boy that I was looking for, not Roxanne. I tried to explain that I was sick __and David had caught my cold__ and I couldn't find him. She had turned away from me, and was walking across a bridge into a fog. I could hear her crying, but I couldn't see her anymore.
There were tears in my eyes as the twilight faded into dark, and I came half awake to remember my dream. It seemed that the place I had been in the dream had been familiar from many dreams, and memories of those came to me in bits and pieces; although there was not trace of what was so familiar in the morning.
I don't remember falling back to sleep.
Katherine was dressed, while I was naked, and we were both sitting on chairs by the seashore while small children ran around us. I saw David among them briefly, and tried to get up to find him, but I was naked and wouldn't get up. I glanced down and I was covering myself with two guns. Katherine was saying that____
I think I'm quoting sightless Milton almost correctly, "___I woke, she fled and my day turned into night."
On the whole, a wet dream would have been a whole lot more enjoyable, but you can forget about Freud. "Sometimes a pencil is only a pencil." Or was it a cigar?
I now knew how the money man would die.
The next morning I completed my last labors, doctoring the "borrowed" transceiver so that throwing a toggle switch would provide positive feedback in the input end of the transmitter. It should howl on whatever channel it was set to, like a banshee.
Something similar was done to two of the three bull horns.
Then the caltrops had to be scattered from a cardboard box along the passable stretches of the center perimeter, leaving a dozen in reserve. The depleted box wound up behind a tree about three quarters down the driveway.
Stretch would have to be left instructions for removing the booby-traps. The hardest part would be cleaning up the caltrops. The two captured handguns were cleaned, wiped down, and buried out back of cottage number one in a plastic bag. Then it would be high time to see McNally.
And later __just before dark__ Rambo, the fox, would start trolling for the hounds.
I know: It's a mixed metaphor.
* * * * * * * * * *
-Luffee reffs ar omathons tu kamras-
Compared to dogs, lowlife humans are stupid.
* * * * * * * * * *
It was a huge lot on the south side of Houston, chock-full of used cars. Their heavy Mercedes pulled off Route 59, onto an obscure side road just before the tract began.
Even through the heavily tinted windows, multi-colored flashes of sunlight __reflected from every auto in each endless row__ were assaulting Weller. That bright day, he had worn nearly opaque sunglasses even while sitting in the limousine's back seat. Indeed, daylight seldom penetrated to his core uncensored, unless there were enemies to be intimidated. And then, oddly enough, Weller's colorless eyes betrayed no weakness to the probing light.
It was his spirit, not his eyes, that found exposure to be offensive. And its appropriate measure of resentment was totally submerged within the absolute chill of implacable hostility that his entire being radiated.
They stopped only long enough to let Doc and Swede out, and then the Chairman and the creature changed their respective positions to respectful ones. When they were settled in and back on the highway, the smaller man asked Weller, "Was twenty thousand enough, you think?"
"Yes, sir," he agreed. "It ought to be."
The small man explained his largesse. "I don't want them getting junkers, cars that won't start."
Weller tried to reassure him; to defuse him without getting him annoyed. "It'll be Ok, sir. I'll check them out later when Garth drops me off. Don't worry about it."
"If it wasn't for me crossing the eyes and dotting the tees, nothing would ever get done around here, Weller. Don't forget it!"
"Yes, sir." Like a pit bull, the creature had paid more attention to the Chairman's tone of voice than to his message and so he didn't need to stifle any amusement at the smaller man's slip of the tongue. Weller's threshold of amusement was ominously high, in any event.
His men would first buy several sets of plates that had been "disappeared" from totalled wrecks, and then steal some vehicles that roughly matched the plate's pedigrees. Close enough that a routine police DMV check wouldn't trip them up on the year and make, anyway.
It was a measure of Weller's powers of intimidation that the twenty thousand dollars was as secure as if it were in his safe-deposit box. He would collect it later, on the way back; then tip Swede and Doc a couple of thousand each for their evening's labor.
You are at Fiction 2, Chapters 15 & 16