Chapter 3

Cindy and I made several more runs with Mark and none of them were as exciting as those first two. Cindy was very disappointed—she wanted to shoot somebody on every trip! Fortunately, Cindy was as levelheaded as I had hoped, and she never fired again on any of the trips. We ran guns several more times and made so much money that I could easily understand why Mark was so enamored of the sport. Having all that money was nice up to a point, but he had simply run out of places to spend it without attracting too much attention. Oh, well, to each his own.

Cathy was now well on her way to a full recovery. She and Cindy were sharing my bed, and I was wondering how I could possibly keep up with two such lusty women. My consolation was that if they killed me with sex, I certainly would die happy! I once made the mistake of complaining to Dr. Carter, but he nearly made himself sick laughing at me. Dammit, "I can't get no respect!"

We had spent so much time with Mark that the seasons were tuning on us, and we were too close to winter to start our run for the Wyoming Undesirables Reservation. The Northern states just did not do what was necessary to keep the highways open during winter storms. A major highway could be closed for days, or even weeks, if the weather was continually bad. The powers that be just did not seem to care if food ran low. I think their attitude could be summed up as "they knew winter was coming, so why didn't they lay in enough supplies?" The fact that the citizens didn't have enough money to do that did not seem to be important enough to bother with.

Dammit, I was having more and more trouble stomaching what the government and Church were doing to run the people down. I was getting closer and closer to the point of wishing for somebody to start a revolution so that I could join in. The logical extension of that just did no occur to me, yet.

We made another gun-running trip into the city to help out the women. This time, we were hauling in RMPs. I didn't know where they were coming from, but I'll bet that it was some supply officer making a hefty pile of money from "wastage" from his armory. I did insist that we test fire every one of the weapons to make sure that the firing pin was still there. We did find a few defective guns, but very damned few. At least, whoever was supplying the weapons was an honest crook!

This time, I did make an effort to talk to the women, but they would not say much to me. Cindy, being a woman, as able to get a little information from them. It seemed that they needed these guns so that they could raid a food warehouse. They were starving, and the government would simply not supply them with enough food unless they paid exorbitant prices for it. Many of the women had simply run out of patience and were going to get enough food or not need it anymore. I came damned close to joining their fight, but Cindy talked me out of doing something so foolish.

A week later, the government TV stations had a bulletin about a food riot by some terrorists. Marines had been called in, and all of the rioting terrorists had been killed. Now I was really mad, but I didn't know what I could do. Then it occurred to me that I might accomplish something if I could destroy ONI headquarters, since they had to be the ones who had called in the Marines—nobody else had the authority locally to do that. On top of everything else, I could accomplish a lot of good if I could find a way to destroy their files. Without their records, ONI would not know whom to descend upon like a plague of locusts.

Fire seemed to be the ideal weapon of choice, but I had to work out how to accomplish that. I talked my ideas over with Mark, and he suggested thermite bombs. There were plenty stored in the basement of the ONI headquarters building if they could just be set off. Mark even knew where in the basement they were stored, so he suggested we set up a few thermite bombs on the floor above the bomb repository, and let them burn through the floor to ignite the bombs stored below. Thermite was thought to be so safe that nobody had any qualms about storing it in an occupied building. After all, by its nature, thermite could not explode!

Cindy came up with a way to get the trigger bombs in place. The anniversary of the revolution which put the present Theocracy in place was coming up in a few weeks. That was always an event celebrated in all of the government offices, so we could carry in some bombs, claiming that they were party favors. If we claimed that we had an order from some higher up that they were for a surprise for the building's workers, nobody would dare touch them no matter where they were placed.

Mark knew where to get a few of the bombs, but that was all that we needed if our plan worked, so we were in business. He picked up the bombs and I rigged a magnesium ribbon fuse. We used a regular fuse to set off the magnesium. Mark and I simply dressed in workman's clothes and marched into the building one day with a fancy-looking work order to deliver the packages. We dropped the hint about what the packages were for, so we had no problem locating them exactly where we wanted them.

That night, during the office party, the bombs went off, burned through the floor, and set off all of the thermite in the basement. A lot of bureaucrats were killed in the resulting fire, none of them women, by the way, and the building was reduced to ashes. Pouring water on the fire only made matters worse, and I suspect some of the firemen knew this, because it was amazing how much water was sprayed on that building before the Fire Chief ordered them to stop. For practical purposes, nothing was salvaged from the building, and we congratulated ourselves in a successful bit of sabotage.

There was one sort of side issue gained from the sabotage—my existence and defection to the other side were lost to the official record. For now, at least, I just did not exist except deep in the records filed in the depths of Cheyenne Mountain. That was as good as being on Mars for all of the likelihood that anybody would want to check.

The one thing that kept the lid on a general uprising was the overwhelming air power controlled by the government. A battle confined to the land would be a toss up as to who would win, but, as soon as you throw in air support, there was just no way that an armed conflict could possibly go against the government. We had to come up with a way to sidestep that air power. There just had to be a way, but we didn't know what it was, yet.

Cathy was now traveling with the smuggling runs, and that was when she came up with the solution to our air cover problem. "Paul, I may have a solution for our air attack problems. Being in this tunnel just suggested to me that we are completely safe from air attack as long as we are underground. Aren't there places where there are caves that run for miles and miles? I think that I can remember one in Kentucky or Tennessee, I'm not sure which, and another big one in New Mexico. It seems to me that if we take over a place as big as that, we would be reasonably safe, and we could guard the few entrances against anything that could attack us. What do you think?"

Mark was driving, so I was perfectly safe when I turned around in my seat and grabbed Cathy in a bear hug. "Honey, you are a genius! I think that you have just signaled the downfall of the Church and the damned government it supports! All we need are a few hundred people to join us, and we could start recruiting an army in complete safety. When was the last time I said I loved you? It was probably this morning, so I will say it again. Cathy, I love you! And I love your genius of a brain! God! You are so much smarter than me that it almost hurts. Please remind me of this tonight so that I can show you the proper appreciation!"

Mark commented, "Cathy has a brilliant suggestion, but what about food. We can't grow food underground, so we would have to come out of the cave to find it. The bastards could get us then."

Cindy popped up with, "Wait a minute. There are lamps that can provide the kind of substitute sunlight we need. All we would have to do is to provide the electricity to run them."

"Cindy, you, too, are a genius. I love you, too, woman! Between the two of you, all I have to do is provide the sex. You two can run the revolution better than I can!"

With the happy thoughts of how we could get around the establishment, the rest of the trip was was like a jaunt in the park. We sold our contraband and headed home, talking of nothing else but which cave we should move into. After a lot of discussion, along with input from Dr. Carter, we decided that the cave in New Mexico was the best bet. That was far enough away from major population centers to let us keep a low profile for a while. Hopefully, we could remain under the radar until we were ready to make ourselves known.

We had about a month before we could travel without fear of the weather. That gave us time for some heavy planning. In broad outline, we planned to load up two large semis and head to Carlsbad, NM. The cave was no longer a tourist attraction simply because everybody was too busy trying to stay alive to be bothered with visiting a cave. Therefore, we should be able to move in with the minimum of disturbance. We started collecting the things that we thought we would need, including those special lamps. We also picked up plenty of guns and ammunition just in case we had to fight sooner than we had hoped. Cathy and Cindy took to weapons like the warriors of old, so they were considered a part of the defense force right off the bat.

Our problem was that we needed more people. Sure we had Mark's family and my family, but that was a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of people that we would need to make a viable settlement. Actually, it was not going to be as hard to recruit people as it was to get them moved to the cave. A bunch of women, and that's who most of our recruits would be, needed all kinds of permission to move across town, much less across a country.

A woman could drive an armored car simply because it would be impossible to see her inside with the protective visors in place, but a man would have to drive something like an open bus or truck where he could be seen at the check points.