Chapter 23

The woman introduced herself as Aimee. The boy was her son Johnny. I didn't question her about it I just took it on faith.

I told them both if they wanted to talk to the women I would go down the line and send them all up. I told them I would borrow a weapon from the last truck in line and keep a watch on the rear. I suggested it would be to all our benefits if Sharon reclaimed her weapon and watched to the fore as they talked. They agreed this was a good idea and I headed to the back of the line telling each of the women to leave their weapons and head for the powwow near the front truck.

I was only banished to the back of the line for about thirty minutes when Aimee came walking back toward me. She apologized for their initial surliness and said they would try to explain themselves later.

"If we promise to be more polite in the future can Johnny and I tag along with you?" she asked, rather sheepishly.

"I would love for you both to join us as long as you understand that you are under no obligation to me at all."

"They all told us that would be the first thing out of your mouth. You won't complain if I decide to come to breakfast in just a T-shirt with no panties will you?" she asked, teasing me now. It was much better than when she was pointing a gun at me.

"Aimee, I just have ethics, I'm not retarded."

I then asked her if we needed to modify the morning uniform for Johnny's sake. It was fun for the women and me, but I was already thinking of the boy's feelings. I wanted both of them to be happy with us and to feel comfortable.

She told me Johnny had already heard about the good morning Jack routine and that it would break his heart if he didn't get to see it.

"He's thirteen Jack. Sickness and sadness or not, he's as horny as he can be. I think he's even been trying to peek at his old mother," she said, grinning.

"That just shows his high intelligence."

She blushed a little at that. I sensed the conversation had gone about as far in that direction as she was comfortable with, so I asked her what information she had for what was up the road.

She told me there was trouble up the road just this side of Waco. That was their original purpose for stopping us. She said she could show me more easily than tell me about it and she invited me to accompany her in the helicopter to see what was going on. I accepted at once.

As we headed back to the lead truck I was going to suggest someone go back and watch behind us. Aimee said we could just check it out from the air as we left. If we saw anything suspicious we could land again and prepare to deal with it. It sounded like a plan to me.

Aimee suggested I get my M4 and bring a few extra grenades just in case. I got it and as we crossed to the helicopter I saw the women were going back toward their respective trucks. I assumed they intended to rearm. Nancy had Johnny in tow.

Aimee made a wide swing around the immediate area. I could tell at once I had been correct in thinking a helicopter would be valuable. We could see everything. She flew down one side of I-35 to the exit for Killeen and then up the other side. We couldn't see anything moving. She continued north after we passed the trucks. We were near Waco in about ten minutes.

The trouble she'd mentioned was obvious at once. Someone had blocked both sides of the Interstate. They had a couple of trucks parked across the lanes. About a quarter of a mile north of these barricades they had done the same thing.

We didn't approach closely, but hovered about a half mile from the barricade. I noticed a large RV parked in the median near the northbound lane and as we were spotted I saw what appeared to be a woman approach the RV and it looked like she knocked on the door. It soon opened and she must have told them of our visit. She left and went back to her post near the barricade. Soon four armed men came out of the RV. One seemed to be looking at us with binoculars.

They studied us for a minute and then two of them raised their weapons. I could tell from the flashes they were firing though we never heard the reports of the weapons. Aimee and I had on headsets so we could talk and I guess the headsets and the noise of the helicopter kept us from hearing the firing. She didn't seem concerned that we were under fire.

"They can't hope to hit us at this range and altitude. They are either trying to warn us or they are just stupid."

"I wonder what they think they're doing?" I asked.

"We discovered them on our way down. They had a southbound car stopped and it looked like they were recruiting the occupants. They all seemed to be women in the car," she said.

"Looks as if they're collecting a harem by force."

"That's what it looked like to Johnny and me. That's the reason we seemed so surly toward you at first. These bozos were still fresh in our mind. As far as we could tell with a short look around there are four men with arms. They seem to stay in the RV most of the time. There are about twenty women with them. The women seem to be lookouts and workers. The men seem to just sit on their asses in that RV unless someone calls them out," Aimee said, explaining.

"Seen enough for now?" she asked after a few minutes.

"Yes. Why don't we go back and talk it over."

We went back to the convoy and she landed just in front of my lead truck this time. We all gathered and talked it over for a while. They had us blocked and there wasn't really a good detour that wouldn't take us a long way out of our way. I doubted they would let us pass if they could stop us. We could probably take them by force but I was worried about casualties.

"Jack, do you think you could hit that RV with a grenade shooting out of the helicopter?" Aimee asked.

"Sharon could probably do better than I could. She has actually fired some grenades for practice. I haven't."

"It's too damned bad that little piece of shit doesn't have a rocket launcher. I could take them out from where we hovered with no problem," Aimee said.

"That's the truth. We wouldn't even have to slow down except to back the trucks off the road," Johnny agreed.

The light finally shined for me.

"I know almost nothing about helicopters; but there are hundreds at Ft Hood. We just left there. I wanted to take one so bad but none of us even knew how to start one up," I told them.

"Can you operate one of the army helicopters?" I asked.

Aimee just looked at me like I was a little slow and then got a really big smile.

"I just left the service about eighteen months ago. I got a job in Dallas flying for traffic reports. I flew combat missions while I was in the service. I was headed to Ft Hood when we saw you. We didn't know if there would be any choppers left there. We'd heard that most of them had been moved to centralized locations right at the last," she said.

"Well that must have been one of the locations they were moved to. Like I said there are hundreds. Most of them looked like they had guns and missiles hanging off of them."

"I can fly over and get one to take care of these assholes then. It probably won't take over an hour or two," Aimee said.

"We're not in a rush. Why don't we just find a crossover and all go back. You can pick your favorite and we can help if you have to do anything to it. We have three empty trucks and you will probably need some sort of supplies or equipment or extra ammunition for it. We could load it in the trucks." Nancy said.

It made sense to everyone. Johnny and Aimee remounted their helicopter and flew north to find a crossover. They were back in two minutes and gave us the signal to go ahead. They flew on to Ft Hood.

We found the crossover and negotiated it with no problems. We were back at Ft Hood in a little over an hour and we drove all the trucks over to the area where I'd found the helicopters. Aimee had already picked a one. She said it was a cobra gunship. Apparently it was for attacking. She said it was an excellent tank killer. I hoped we didn't run into any tanks, but she said it would deal with the RV like an atomic bomb would take care of a tent.

We helped carry things as Aimee found the proper ammunition for the guns. She loaded eight of what she called TOW rockets into pods on the sides of the cobra. She also loaded some other type of rockets into round canisters that were mounted under little stubby wings. Then she loaded some 20mm cartridges for the gattling gun which extended from the nose.

We all tried to help as Aimee found a fueling truck and fueled the helicopter. She also fueled the tiny one they had come in. Then we went with Aimee as she scouted out ammunition and ordinance for loading into one of the trucks. We filled a truck with supplies and ammunition for the helicopter. Luckily they were all packed in special boxes to protect them. It ended up being a pretty heavy load but the truck didn't complain.

Another large benefit to having our two new friends was Aimee's knowledge of military hardware and equipment. We went back to the huge warehouse where she and Johnny outfitted themselves with boots and clothing like we had. I was surprised that Johnny had no trouble finding things to fit him. He was a little big for his age though and I guess soldiers came in all sizes.

Aimee also showed us about body armor and helped us all with the proper fit and such. She outfitted each of us with a proper helmet. She didn't see us wearing them much, but she said if bullets did start flying we would be glad we had them. She even told us exactly what type of machine gun was intended for the humvee and helped us find and install it. We procured a few more of these that used the same ammunition and we loaded many thousands of rounds for them.

Aimee was also familiar with the army's starlight vision, night vision, and infrared imaging equipment. She found several different types and showed us what to load and we took several repetitions of many different models. We all got another M4 each and Aimee helped us equip them all with night vision sights. She even found one that would fit my Barrett when I asked. We now all had a day gun and a night one.