“Punchbowl Approach, this is Ryder 32 and 68 heavy, inbound for pax and cargo.”
The radio had crackled in their ears. The signal strength was very low. Bekka must have hers turned down to almost no transmit power or be very far away. Garen was happy to hear Bekka’s voice. He was beginning to wonder. He was also happy she was not using one of the duress words.
“Ryder Flight, your arrival was scheduled for earlier.”
“Aircraft problem, Punchbowl. Had to do a tail swap.”
“Copy, you are cleared for straight approach and taxi to the east taxiway. Pax and cargo is staged for your arrival.” Garen and Kara shifted around so they could watch the approach. Although there were no duress words given, they didn’t want to take chances at this point. It would be bad enough when they were loading the gear into the vehicles. Garen was wondering what the vehicle problem was that needed it to be swapped out, and for that matter, what did they swap it out for and with who. He sure as hell hoped it wasn’t the moving truck or the ambulance they had ditched. They had ditched them for a reason.
They saw Terry’s SUV come around a corner leading up to the east loading dock. Allyson was driving it. They knew Angelique was supposed to be in that as well. All looked right so far. Next came a HMMWV, but it looked off for some reason. As it got closer, he could recognize many mods to the original. This looked like a hillbilly bastardized spec ops version. There were racks and baskets mounted all over. Everything was a different color. They could see from this distance it was a soft skinned, semi naked rolling frame rather than one of the up armored later models. It was dragging two trailers behind it. Garen and Kara could see Bekka behind the wheel. The rest of the vehicle was empty.
Garen and Kara looked at the vehicles, then at each other. What followed was a thirty second conversation of half-finished sentences and phrases. They had both packed enough aircraft pallets, trucks, shipping containers and such to be able to roughly gauge what can fit where at a glance. They directed Allyson to pull up to one spot and Bekka to another. Before Bekka could even get out of the vehicle, Garen was cranking down the wheeled support on the rearmost trailer to decouple it from the one in front of it. Hat this point, He didn’t care how or why they were there, he just wanted to get loaded and move. It was broad daylight and he didn’t like being out and about in it. Part of him was considering running this whole train back down the street once they were loaded and hiding in the Center building until nightfall to cut down on observers seeing them rolling with all this stuff. Bekka joined him at the trailer tongue.
“OK, Bekka, do I want to know where and why?”
“Old man Ezekiel’s shop. I knew he had the trailers.”
“The trailers I understand, but the HMMWV? What did it cost us?”
Bekka gave him the thumbnail sketch of what went down and what it potentially entailed. He didn’t seem pleased, but then again, he wasn’t really displeased. It was more the added moving pieces when they were tired, hurt, scared and out in the open. After she explained, Garen weighed in on it.
“Sounds like a decent deal. If they show up, we will turn the training building back on. This will also open up the option for any of the others who feel the need for some more room to move down there. Cheer up, more hands make the work go faster.”
“And eat the food up faster, and make more noise, and attract more attention, and so forth and so on” Bekka countered.
They wheeled the trailer over to the back of Terry’s SUV. Using a hand truck, they four of them began loading the trailers as quickly as they could. Each rotated shifts with Angelique as the others kept loading. It was past noon when they had finished. It was time for the next decision.