The Bonner Incident: Joshua's War (3 page)

Griffey nodded as Moore turned to Wagner, “When you speak to the director of the NSA, you will be courteous. We don’t need his nerds playing games with us, understand?” When Wagner nodded, Moore pointed at the door.

Watching the door close behind Wagner, Moore turned to Griffey, “Steven,” Moore said in a low voice and Griffey jumped at hearing his first name. “After you give your advice, write a letter outlining why only one or two people would need to be involved with the video alteration. You do not write, kill or any threatening remarks about actions against them. Tell the director you are sending your recommendations on damage control according to the understanding of your orders. One will be via secured email. You will make a copy of this letter and make no note of it. Have a hard copy hand delivered to your director. The second hard copy and email print out, you hide, understand? That will be your only salvation if they attempt to burn you.”

Loving that someone understood what was going on, Griffey nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find something that I can rush to prove we are ahead of schedule.”

Griffey gathered his stuff and left as Winters turned to Moore. “What the hell is all this?”

He looked at her with a grave face. “When you move up the ladder, your soul and morals are taken in exchange. If I had known that, I would still be a field agent, like you.”

“Sir, you knew Mr. Anderson was responsible and said it that very day. This proves it, why hide it?”

Moore stood up and gathered his papers. “So nobody can see that the monster we created is fighting back.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

As Moore and the others watched his videos, Joshua was at the dugout. Only stopping at the dugout long enough to drop equipment off and gather what he needed, Joshua looked up at the drizzling rain clouds. “At least it’s not snow,” he said and headed back to the dugout.

Walking over to the massive bear trap that’d sat on the mantle of his cabin, Joshua picked it up and grunted at the fifty plus pounds of steel. “No trapper on earth could carry more than one of these in the field,” he grunted, carrying it outside. Jack didn’t like it when Joshua strapped the heavy hunk of metal to the pack saddle.

“Hey, don’t be an ass, this is your job,” Joshua said walking away. Grabbing the bear trap set tool and spring clamps, he looked around the dugout, “I’ll be out for a while.”

Strapping the set tool to Jack and putting the clamps in his saddle bag, Joshua climbed on King and gave him a small kick. He had looked at the map he’d taken from the horsemen and had seen that a team was near Upper Priest Lake looking for him and the three lost members of team eighty-one. He knew where they’d been dropped off but not where they were now. He hoped he would be close enough to catch their radio report this afternoon.

He had ridden in foul weather before and could do it, but it wasn’t his most enjoyable time. Guiding King along the slope and staying below the ridgeline, Joshua headed for Upper Priest Lake, ten miles away.

When he stopped King on a slope overlooking Upper Priest Lake, he lifted his arm looking at his watch. “Not bad for crap weather travel,” he mumbled. Climbing off of King, he set up camp in the trees several hundred yards below the ridge. And double that, from the valley below. Using his heat tabs, he warmed up some beans and rice.

Pulling out the radio, he turned it on by punching in the numbers he had memorized on the keypad and it came alive with traffic. Glancing at his watch, “You aren’t supposed to check in till 1800, you have a schedule, now keep it,” he said grabbing his notepad as his watch only read 1722.

Listening in, he realized it was a team further south near Goose Creek Road, which was over thirty miles away from him. A member of the team had slipped and broken his ankle and they wanted a chopper to come in. “Keep wishing,” Joshua said writing the call signs down.

When command told them to move north to a road for pick-up, he knew someone was in for a bad day. And the guys with him were as well, they would have to carry a man out several miles over unforgiving terrain. Tucking his notepad inside his vest, Joshua ate his rice and beans.

“Glad only you and Jack are here,” he said looking up at King. “My farts are making my own eyes water.”

After cleaning his bowl and putting it away, he sat looking up at the towering trees and listening to the now silent radio. A smile crossed his clean-shaven face as he thought of Sonya and William and prayed they were alright. “Team fourteen to command, come in,” he heard over the radio.

Sitting up and pulling out his notepad, Joshua grabbed the map once again, liking that it wasn’t made from paper. From the horsemen’s notes, he knew when they went out, there were only six teams, so he grabbed the weird pen that only wrote on the map. Waiting for team twenty, the team near Upper Priest Lake, Joshua made notes of where the others were.

“Command, this is team twenty,” came over the radio and Joshua got excited.

“Go ahead, twenty. This is command.”

“No sign of lost members or suspect. Found seven, repeat seven civilians in search area and informed them to leave or face detainment. Subjects left area and names and photos will be turned in upon arrival to command.”

“Copy, team twenty, what is current location?” Joshua listened to the numbers and was impressed that someone could give a reading down to five yards, but then he realized they had the GPS units. He saw they were in a clearing south of the lake.

“Copy, planned route?” command asked and he looked at the radio because they had never asked that before.

“Moving up east side of lake to grid,” the voice paused and this time gave a broad grid longitude and latitude that covered five hundred square yards.

Marking the map, Joshua chuckled, “Can’t make your toy give you information if you aren’t standing there, huh?”

When unit twenty signed off, he listened to the last two teams as he studied the map, seeing that team twenty only planned to move eight miles tomorrow. Seeing a sloping ridge that rose up away from the lake and had a shallow draw that ran in the middle of it, Joshua bet this would be their route.

Now that he knew where everybody was, Joshua repacked and hopped on King. When King grunted, Joshua popped the side of his neck. “This is easy ground to cover, so quit complaining.”

With the drizzle waxing and waning, he headed south on the east side of the lake.

***

As Joshua had left the dugout, Sonya and the others were in the living room looking at William’s laptop at the video the news site had put up. “Man, when Dad gets mad, he gets mad and does something about it,” William said watching the explosion again.

“I wish he would’ve got all of ‘em,” Mrs. Anderson said walking in while carrying a plate and pushing people out of the way. “William, Nana made you and Sammy some cookies,” she said handing him the plate.

“Thanks, Nana,” William said, taking the plate and holding it out to Sammy who took some.

A knock at the door made everyone turn. Gene stepped over to the door. “If someone can get through Ernest and his crew, then they have earned the right to come inside,” he said opening the door.

A man stepped in removing his balaclava and they all smiled upon seeing it was Ernest. He looked at everyone around the laptop with the video paused at the explosion. “The man is resourceful, that’s for sure,” he said walking over to Sonya and holding out a large envelope. “A courier dropped this off. Don’t worry, we scanned it.”

“How did you scan it?” Sonya said taking the envelope.

“Ultrasound. I would prefer to just open it to make sure it was alright, but in this case, I made an exception. I know the handwriting. He bought three trucks from me last year,” Ernest grinned and Sonya lifted the envelope up, seeing her name and address in handwriting she would know anywhere.

“Oh my God,” she gasped grabbing the pull tab and ripping it off. She opened the envelope and pulled out a cellphone. Looking at it, she handed it to William and pulled out a normal envelope. Looking at the large envelope, she saw it had come out of Spokane.

“Yeah, we need to burn that, Sonya. I hope you don’t mind,” Ernest said. “That ties him to the shooting and will make you accessories after the fact.”

Nana looked around at everyone, “Let’s give them some room, so they can read it in private.”

“No,” Sonya said standing up. “Everyone here is willing to fight for us, if you want to know what Joshua wrote, I don’t mind,” she finished looking at Ernest.

“Sonya, I gave my word to defend you and William at all cost. Otherwise, me and my boys would be running in the mountains assisting Joshua,” he said with a nod. “The only reason I mentioned the envelope was for you. The rest of my boys have already started actions against the feds here, and with what they’ve done alone, will get us serious prison time in a faraway land.”

“You mind if I know?” Gene said with a groan. “I don’t want a war here unless we have no choice. I feel we will get one sooner or later, but I would prefer later, much later.”

Nodding, “We took out their cellphone surveillance and dumped a nasty computer virus in their network,” Ernest told him. “It’s freaking them the hell out.”

“That was you?” William asked looking at the cellphone as the screen came to life.

“Yeah, well not me personally, but some of the boys who know what they are doing on computers,” he said and pointed at a computer tower that had wires leading to suction cups on the windows. “Where did you get that?”

William looked up, “Made it,” he said and shoved a cookie in his mouth, holding it as his thumbs rapidly tapped the screen of the phone.

Sitting beside him, Sammy watched in amazement while lifting his arm and pointing at the table. “He’s showing me how to build another one and program it. I’m not as good as he is with computers because mine is really limited,” he said.

“Baby, I told you, that’s all we could afford,” Barbara said from behind the couch, watching William tapping the screen that was now black with white text in lines she knew was computer code.

“What do you mean ‘limited’?” Ben asked knowing whatever William was doing was way beyond him.

“Its processor is six years old and for computers, that’s ancient,” Sammy said and Ben spun around, looking at Barbara with a hard glare. “That’s why I like yours and use it. It’s better than mine.”

“You make him work on an ancient computer?” Ben snapped at her.

“Ben, I’m a hairdresser and you won’t let me go to work now, so you can’t complain to me,” she popped off.

“Sammy, if you had a computer like the one William has, you would be better, right?” Ben asked looking down at the couch and seeing Sammy mumbling to William as William typed on the small screen.

“Yeah, even with your computer, I can’t run Linux,” Sammy said trying to follow what William was doing. “That’s why I asked you to get another hard drive and expanded RAM.”

“Son, RAM to me is a truck or animal. Hard drive, I’ll tell you about it when you’re older,” Ben said spinning on Barbara. “Get your purse, we are going to town to buy him a computer like William’s.”

“He can use my spare laptop,” William said taking the cookie out of his mouth while reading the code on the screen.

Ben looked from William back to Barbara. “We’re buying him one of those, too.”

“Ben-,” she started and he put his hand in her face.

“My boy isn’t going to be ‘limited’ because we didn’t provide him with stuff to learn. He’s a genius on computers. The only one I know that’s better is William. Sammy came to my house and my computer was froze up and wouldn’t do anything, not even turn off. He sat down and had it fixed in nothing,” Ben said snapping his fingers. “We will not deprive my boy, is that understood?”

Not looking back, trying to understand the code William was reading, Sammy spoke over his shoulder. “Ben, I unplugged your computer and rebooted it. Granted, I had to defrag it, but that was it.”

Ben was staring at Barbara. “I understood ‘unplugged’. Get your purse.”

Barbara smiled at him as she reached up and stroked his goatee. “Baby, I don’t have the money.”

“Gene?” Ben said turning around, “Am I allowed to spank her for that or does it need to be for a more serious offense?”

Raising his eyebrows, Gene reached for his belt. “In my understanding of relationships and family, she’s crossed the line, Ben. You can use my belt. I’ll even help hold her down.”

Reaching up and pulling Ben’s face till he was looking at her, “Ben, that’s sweet and we both love it, but you haven’t seen the price of those things. I don’t think you can afford it.”

“Gene, your offer to hold her down still good or does it have a time limit?” Ben said holding his hand back toward Gene.

With a grin from ear to ear, Gene pulled his belt off and handed it to Ben. “Offer is still good, Ben. You don’t let her tell you that you can’t provide for your boy.”

Barbara stepped back, “Okay, okay, I give,” she laughed and Gene took his belt back and she lunged, wrapping her arms around Ben and kissing him.

“Babe, I have a dip,” he said turning his face away.