At the House
Angelique and Bekka walked into the house to find Andrea, Doug, Sabine, Paige, Heidi and Allyson all standing around the table, staring at the map.
“Great. Wonderful. Catch me up.” Bekka proclaimed as she joined them. Sabine was the first to answer Bekka.
“Two critical medical patients with the group coming in from the Salt Lake area.”
“And you say they are three days out?”
“They say they are three days out from the front gate of the park.” Sabine clarified.
“How many people and vehicles?”
Bekka saw some sheepish looks glancing around the table. She knew there would probably be no good answers to all the questions she had at this point, but she had to try.
“OK, so not sure of how many, either people or vehicles, so what type of vehicles, speed capability, on road verses off road ability, driving experience, safe or being chased, projected route to here, exact current location and a whole lot of other f’ng important questions end up with a big ‘hell if we know’ for an answer! Right?” Bekka had tried to keep a handle on her temper, but she was worn out and frustrated so a little leaked out as she spoke.
She looked over at Andrea. “With the comm plan, when is next contact with them?”
Andrea looked pleased to actually have something Bekka wanted. “Sabine told them to press forward another day’s worth of travel and they are supposed to call in 24 hours from now.”
“So, in a nutshell, what you are telling me is I have twenty-four hours to plan a link-up location, select a team, prep gear, maps, comm plan, a covert way to get them the info on where to meet us, all at the same time over half of us are down with Garen and Odina doing something that has to keep going, otherwise we risk losing the assets down there we are hoping to retrieve.” Now it wasn’t her temper peeking through, but her frustration at the task laid before her.
Bekka looked around the table. She could see the size of the task was beginning to hit home to them. Most were looking somber now. Most, not all. She saw Allyson looking at her, a lopsided grin on her face. Bekka snapped at her.
“What!”
Allyson kept grinning. “That’s a hell of a Happy Meal. You want fries with that?”
That broke the mood. As soon as Bekka chuckled, so did everyone else.
“OK, people. For us to do this, we are going to work our asses off. Somebody crank up some coffee. Sabine, I need a real world no shit estimate of what you need to take over treatment for these two. They are obviously in their vehicles now. I need to know if we can leave them in their vehicles or do we need to bring something big enough to do a full-fledged snatch and run. Doug, you know the roads east and south of the park best. We need somewhere we can link up, which means we need somewhere we can hide and watch them arrive, with plenty of parking or maneuvering room if we have to juggle vehicles around. We don’t want to be too far out though. Remember, we will bring them here first, just like last time.”
“What do you need the rest of us to do?” Heidi asked.
Bekka had the first inkling of a plan forming in her head. She figured they would just do a sort of escort since there wasn’t any reference of other needs besides the medical issue. That meant they could use small fast and nimble vehicles instead of these freight haulers they have been driving. She couldn’t strip all the people from Garen’s location.
Who did she know she needed? Sabine for the medical. But what if they had the sick in two vehicles? She might need a second medic. She knew she needed two good drivers. Well, the best two were her and Allyson. They didn’t need Allyson’s truck though. Sneak in and blaze away? They could actually use the Subaru and the Hyena. If she had Allyson driving, that meant, if she needed another medic, she could swap her out and have someone else drive, but that wasn’t a great idea unless it was an emergency.
She at least had her two drivers. She knew the Subaru was up for it, but she had to empty stuff out and reset it, the Hyena too.
“Heidi, Allyson and Angelique, if you guys could go get the Hyena set for a run, six cans and your gear, Allyson. I figure the drivers will be me in the Subaru ad Allyson in the Hyena. I’m still working on the rest.” She turned to Paige and Andrea.
"The rest of us are going to work some of the communications and link up procedures with I try to figure out who else is going with Allyson, Sabine and me.”