Liberators Read online

  13

  DEPARTURE

  In recognition of cybersecurity as a national priority, the US Cyber Command was chartered to protect our national interests in cyberspace. Although support for this national initiative is gaining ground, it is imperative, going forward, that we broaden our understanding of the science that underpins cybersecurity. We must form collaborative public and private partnerships and devote more attention to understanding security science.

  —Keith B. Alexander, General, U.S. Army (Commander, U.S. Cyber Command and Director, NSA/Chief, CSS), The Next Wave, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2012

  LaCroix Homestead, Kearneysville, West Virginia—October, the First Year

  The alarm sounded early on Malorie’s phone. She pulled on her BDU pants, wigwam socks, and USMC Danner boots. Then she slipped on an Under Armour long-sleeve shirt and put on a merino wool shirt. The October mornings were chilly in West Virginia, especially with the high humidity and being so close to the river. “Best to dress in layers,” she said to herself.

  Joshua put the battery back in his cell phone and walked out to the corner of the property where Malorie had told him that he could get the best signal. Joshua called in to the SOCC and said that he wouldn’t be coming into work today due to an “unexpected personal situation” that required he be home that day. The voice on the other end of the phone was more than perturbed in the reply, “Yeah, you and about half the force are calling in today to take care of the home front. I’ll mark it down in the log and report it to the desk sergeant, who’s busy putting out other brush fires right now.” Joshua saw Ken’s text and saw a reply all from Dustin as well:

  Godspeed Ken and Terry. Hope you get this in time. Love you as well brother. Joshua, status?

  Joshua felt his eyes well up, as he knew that unless the world started to mend very quickly, this might be the last time he ever got to speak with Ken on this side of heaven. Joshua replied:

  Jeep w/ 5 pax, making all haste, sit not good in MD. Will be radio silent here after. Plz pray. Love you both brothers.

  Joshua jogged back to the house. He knew that the Agency would likely do a “pull” on his phone when they figured out that he was AWOL, using tower registration data and network metrics to locate his phone and presumably him with it. In recognition of this unique “global adversary” with its finger in every pie, he pulled the battery out of his department-store TracFone and threw it away. (He had paid cash for it, and had activated it from an out-of-the-way pay phone, with no cameras around.) Next he propped the phone on a rock up against a tire on his Jeep so when he rolled out the phone would be demolished under the weight of their getaway vehicle, making him radio silent.

  Malorie had the news on, and none of it was good. She helped get the boys dressed, and Joshua had breakfast on the table for them all to eat one last meal together at the LaCroix homestead before departing for Kentucky.

  The mood was somber, and toward Martinsburg to the north, they could hear a distant gunshot punctuate the early morning tranquillity. Malorie spoke up. “I’m going to have the boys feed the animals; I think that the grownups need to talk about our plan.”

  Megan replied, “Good idea.” She turned to the boys and said, “Jean, Leo, go feed the animals, we’ll have breakfast ready for you when you get back—chop-chop.”

  In a moment of relative privacy, Joshua said, “I got a text from Ken and Terry last night—not good.” Malorie and Megan could tell that Joshua was worried about his brother Ken in Chicago.

  Megan said, “We’ll just have to pray for the Lord’s protection that we’re doing what we should be doing and that His favor will rest upon us as we make this trip.”

  After they all took a turn and prayed together, Joshua started with the practical parts of the plan. “The way I see it is that any progress westward and southward is what we need. In a perfect world we could have left two days ago, but like they say, ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty.’”

  “What about being tracked?” Megan asked. “I still have the battery out of my phone from yesterday.” She turned to Joshua. “If you got that text message, I’m guessing that you powered yours back on?”

  Joshua cleared his throat. “Correct, I had to call in that I was not coming to work today, so I used my phone, saw that Ken wrote, and that Dustin responded, then replied all to say that we were mounting up. As you might have guessed, I purposely avoided being more specific than that.” Joshua grabbed Megan’s hand. (If they were going to have a disagreement, he wanted to start the habit of holding hands, because it is hard to lose your temper when you do that.)

  Joshua continued, “As soon as I was finished I pulled the battery and put the phone under my tire so that when we roll I will be forever off the air.”

  “I understand,” said Megan, and she looked at Malorie and said, “I’ll do the same to my phone; I’m sure that Sprint will understand. What about you, Mal?”

  “I rooted my Android phone a few months ago with a tin foil hat ROM that allows me to kill the cellular board and verifiably turn on or turn off the Wi-Fi card, leaving the device completely passive in true ‘airplane mode.’ I have a ton of survival, first-aid, and wild foraging apps and military field manuals on there that don’t require a network connection. Personally, I think that with a twelve-volt DC charger that can be adapted to charge from a car battery if necessary, we’re better off having that information along with us.” Malorie may not have ever worked in the spook world, but she’d heard enough from her big sister to know that “one account, all of Google” was not your friend. Malorie put her phone back in her pocket and asked Joshua, “Do you have any GPS, Sirius, or XM installed on the Jeep?”

  Joshua raised his eyebrows and said, “No, and I had a guy from my church go through and check to make sure that there were not any emitters on there. He works at the Agency, so he didn’t think that I was weird.”

  Just then the boys came back in and sat down at the table for breakfast. After they had eaten and packed some coloring books and toys, Malorie shut off the gas and extinguished the pilot light on the stove, followed by turning off the well pump and draining the water in the line as best she could in a hurry. She knew that the bank or someone would eventually come for the house, but it was best not to make a bad situation worse due to neglect.

  Joshua checked the weapons one last time and loaded them, with the adults holstering their pistols and positioning their long weapons next to them in the vehicle. Megan had remembered to grab some short bungee cords, which made it easy to secure the long weapons in such a manner that they could be easily presented. Megan let the boys run around to wear off some of their interminable energy before they were loaded up into the Jeep.

  When you’re forced to summarize an experience, it’s typical to remember the first memory, the last memory, and likely any painful memories as well. The boys were distracted with getting to ride in a Jeep and unresponsive to Megan hugging them close to her for comfort. All she could think about was them. She thought of Jean toddling under the apple tree, and Leo carrying eggs in an old ice cream bucket up to the back porch grinning from ear to ear with pride. With one last look in the rearview mirror, Megan shed a tear as the Jeep rolled down the driveway, rendering two phones catastrophically destroyed. This would be a new life for all of them, in a world with nothing but the unknown ahead. Nostalgia and hesitation would likely be as deadly as the fires raging through Chicago or the strange, deadly new influenza strain in Charlotte. Joshua caught the gleam from the moisture in her eye in his rearview mirror and reached back to gently squeeze her calf between gear shifts.

  As the sun started to paint the eastern sky orange they passed a gas station that had not been updated since the early seventies. Joshua was glad that he had wisely filled up with gas yesterday in Charles Town while the prices were still below seven dollars a gallon. There was a man sitting on a folding canvas camping chair in the back of a truck with a rusted cab; evidently the bed had rusted years before, as it had been replaced with a ho
memade welded frame and a deck made out of pressure-treated planks. He had a spray-painted plywood sign next to him that read:

  Only Premium Gas

  $7 $8 $10 per gallon

  CASH ONLY.

  There was a dog lying contentedly in the shade of the truck, and two much younger men with shotguns were also visible. Malorie noted that the power was still on, because through the garage door window you could see the red Coca-Cola illuminated sign from the vending machine, although the rest of the building was dark.

  Malorie, like Joshua and Megan, had been operating on very little sleep and by this time was feeling punchy. She mused out loud, “You know, when you think about it, actually four dollars seems pretty cheap.”

  “Four dollars for what?” Joshua was not in any form to try to read her mind.

  “Four dollars a gallon for gasoline, I mean before this ‘Crunch’ happened. People used to complain about the price of gas being high, but if you think about it we’ve traveled for miles already expending fuel that’s almost priceless now. Think about it: If we were walking, then how far would we have gotten today? Maybe twenty miles if we were really moving, but not likely—not with two small kids in tow. So at four dollars a gallon for the five of us to be traveling down the road at thirty-five miles an hour seems like a bargain. Heck, forty-four dollars a gallon would seem like a bargain to me if I was one of those people stranded on the 495 D.C. Beltway right now.”

  “I can only imagine . . . that must be a massacre right about now,” Megan groaned.

  They slowly made progress down Route 3, keeping their eyes out for potentially adverse situations. Any lead time to spot a roadside ambush with roadblocks using trees or vehicles, malicious actors feigning a breakdown or injury, or really anything could spell disaster for them.

  Joshua made eye contact with Megan in the rearview mirror and asked, “How are the boys doing?”

  “Pretty tired, a lot of thumb sucking and not much movement. I would like to try to get them to pee when you find a good place to stop.”

  “Roger that.”

  Malorie said, “I can spell you and drive for a while if you like, Joshua.”

  “That may work out great; let’s see about it when we stop.”

  As they clicked off the miles in a westerly direction, they noticed that people were generally moving about. It was uncommon to see a whole lot of work vehicles like landscaper trucks or plumbers’ vans out on the roads. Most of the traffic consisted of overloaded cars. Joshua spotted one SUV with a clearly visible propane tank inside the enclosed cab, a disaster waiting to happen. Each small town was conducting itself differently in how it processed traffic. Some towns had a definite roadblock with either local law enforcement or sheriff’s deputies stopping each vehicle asking questions about where they were coming from, their reason for travel, and their destination; and some towns were still oblivious to the enormous implications of the Crunch. Joshua usually did the talking when they were stopped at a checkpoint and had his badge at the ready—which usually took the anxiety level down for the law enforcement officer standing behind the B pillar.

  Malorie was very cautious as she got the Jeep out on the highway. She kept her speed around fifty-five miles per hour on I-79 South. The afternoon sun was picking up all the hints of autumn as the light shone through the deciduous trees shedding their leaves for winter. Malorie said, “At our rate of speed, we should be in Charleston in forty-five minutes.”

  “Gotcha, I see our approximate location on our map. Wow, that’s a lot of red brake lights up ahead, and I also see police lights past that—proceed with caution.”

  “Yeah, I am going to stay in the right lane with at least a car length in front of me so that I can jump out if need be,” Malorie responded. “Last thing I want to do is be trapped in traffic and make us easy pickings for criminals looking to become Mad Max road looters.”

  Megan was looking around in all directions, then said with a puzzled voice, “You know, I hadn’t thought of it until now, but I haven’t seen a lot of semi-trucks with trailers; instead they’re all disconnected, standing on the road shoulder. It seems like everyone is running bobtail. I wonder why?”

  “I imagine that it has to do with the fact that a loaded semi only gets five or so miles to the gallon, but if they drop the trailer they can likely double that and increase their chances of getting home,” Malorie replied.

  “Speaking of, how are we doing for fuel?” Joshua asked from the passenger seat.

  “Just over a quarter tank left,” Malorie answered. “After we get through this mess ahead, let’s find some gas. We can save the fuel we carried along with us for when we can’t buy fuel at any price.”

  Joshua answered, “Good idea, looks like the West Virginia State Police are forcing everyone off at this exit.” Joshua squinted to read the sign up ahead that identified the exit. “Exit 9. Well according to the map, this Exit 9 coming up is Elkview. And it looks like we don’t have a choice; everyone is being forced to get off of the highway anyhow.”

  14

  MUTUAL SELF-INTEREST

  I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

  —Thomas Jefferson

  En Route Through West Virginia—October, the First Year

  As they prepared to take the exit off Highway 79, Joshua was processing a lot of different information. No matter what the situation was, he knew he had to find solutions that wouldn’t lead them into a trap. He didn’t want to put them in that position if it could be avoided, not because they were incapable of defending themselves, but the five of them likely couldn’t shoot, move, and communicate effectively if they became decisively engaged. “Looks like there’s a Speedway gas station over there. Let’s check that out. Malorie, be sure to look for a way out like a curb to clear or bushes to drive over for any line you pick to drive down. The last thing we want to do is drive into a shooting gallery that we can’t get out of.”

  Megan, who had been passing out Goldfish crackers as a snack to the boys in the backseat, breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. “I’m glad that you said that, since I was thinking the same thing.”

  Malorie carefully circled wide past the Speedway to survey the area. A large group of cars seemed to be forming at the McDonald’s and Bob Evans parking lots, with a few car horns sounding and people getting out of their vehicles to confront other drivers. The Speedway gas station had cones across the entrance, and a large piece of cardboard spray-painted with the words, NO POWER, NO GAS. Standing in the parking lot as an antilooting measure were five guys with long guns. Clearly, the expectation was that this situation could get ugly in a big hurry. Malorie drove past the gas station, turned the Jeep around, and pulled over. She then looked over her shoulder to address the group. “Seems like this whole area could get violent fast with the interstate shut down. No power, no food, no fuel—we need to figure something out quickly. I doubt most of these people in overloaded vehicles are as prepared as we are, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure that out.”

  Joshua thought before he spoke and said, “That Speedway may still have gas to sell, but they aren’t selling it because they don’t have a way to get it out of the tanks in the ground. Lucky for them I’m with two very smart ladies who improvised a battery-operated pump for just such a situation. The question is, can we get close enough to ask them to allow us to pump fuel with our pump without seeming like a threat?”

  “Joshua, if you walk up to them they are only going to see a fit guy with a holstered pistol and likely not hear what you have to say. If I walk up there with the pump in my hand and ask for the owner, they’ll be less likely to perceive a woman as a threat. I think that I have the best chance of us actually finding out,” Megan said. As she finished, a gray Chrysler sedan with the tell-tale lunging and sputtering sound of a car that is running out of fuel passed them and drifted to an odd angle as it coasted past them to the curb on the opposite side of the street.r />
  “I can’t say that I like sending you, but those guys don’t seem like they want to get into any kind of a discussion about the gas, so I’ll stay back here with the .270 to cover you if need be.” Joshua swallowed hard. “Be careful. I noticed that there’s a guy with a black rifle up on the roof. I love you.”

  Megan opened her door and then accessed the ammo can on the floorboard, removing the pump device that Malorie had fabricated for her. She then kissed the boys, said, “Mommy will be right back,” and closed the door. She looked into the passenger window and smiled at Joshua and Malorie, then approached the men with the pump device in plain view. After a short conversation with the first man holding a shotgun, he pointed her to another man standing between the plastic-wrapped overpriced bundles of firewood and the ice-chest freezer. Megan confidently approached him and explained the situation. From behind the wheel of the Jeep, Malorie could notice the situation change after Megan spoke to the second man; she could see her gesture toward the Jeep and see him nod in approval. Then he started to shout something to the other men standing in the nearest entrance, gesturing wildly with his one hand while holding a lever gun in the other.

  Megan’s diplomacy had worked, and she waved to them in the Jeep, pointing to the cast-iron covers recessed into the cement in the rear of the Speedway parking lot. Joshua turned to the boys. “How are you guys doing back there?” An echoing “Good,” came in stereo from the backseat, and Malorie slowly maneuvered the Jeep toward the fuel-access holes in the rear of the parking lot. She parked the Jeep so that it was facing generally toward the road, but so that she could easily clear the curb and make an exit through the adjacent back lot if need be. Joshua got out of the Jeep and met Megan by the man near the firewood and ice-chest freezer, noticing that Megan was relaxed and the man was obviously very happy. The man by the freezer spoke first and said, “Your lady here is very smart. I have fuel to sell, but I can’t get to it. As you can see, the interstate is closed and things are going to get very ugly here soon.”