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  South Florida wasn’t the best place to be right now; especially in the aftermath of a hurricane that added to the misery and suffering that had begun months before it struck. Despite all that though, Bart was a lot better off than most folks here. Considering all the stores aboard the vessels in his yard, he had everything he needed for the foreseeable future. If worse came to worse and life became impossible here, he had his choice of seaworthy vessels in which to set sail for other shores. The boatyard was out in the boonies away from the urban sprawl near the coast, but still connected to the waters of the world, situated as it was on the banks of a navigable river. Bart doubted there were many places in the U.S. where he’d be any better off, and if there were, they were in the remote mountain and desert areas that he had no means to reach anyway. The whole country had simply gone to hell in short order, and at this point a hurricane wasn’t nearly the worst thing that had happened.

  The two thieves made their way straight to the stern of a 54-foot Viking Convertible sport fisherman that Bart had hauled months before. The yacht was blocked up and the bottom had been cleaned and sanded for fresh paint right before Bart lost his maintenance crew and work was shut down. Like most of the vessels in his yard, it was likely to remain where it sat for a long time, if not indefinitely. Bart hadn’t heard a word from the owner over the entire summer and had no idea where he was, or even if he was still alive. With the whole economy already flushed down the toilet and insurance companies nowhere in sight, most such playthings of the formerly wealthy would remain abandoned where they were left. But they were still private property, and according the service contracts signed by their owners, they were Bart’s property until the yard bills were paid.

  Bart had little personal interest in vessels like the Viking though, as it was far too fuel-thirsty to be useful in any practical way in this reality. A luxury sport fishing vessel was the last thing anyone needed right about now, but there were useful things on board, and the two men from the kayaks could barely make a dent in it all even if Bart wasn’t there to put a stop to their pilfering. That was beside the point, though. Whether they took one item or stripped it bare they were looting on his property, and Bart intended to make sure they didn’t get away with it.

  He watched and waited while the two found a yard ladder and propped it up against the stern swim platform so they could climb aboard. The time to shoot was coming, and he adjusted his position to allow more relaxed breathing, sweeping the scope across the cockpit above the men to assess the best spot to cut them down before they broke inside. Even though it wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, he wanted to avoid putting a round through the topsides or the expensive glass salon doors. The Viking might never float again, but that was still no excuse for shooting up a 1.2 million dollar yacht. With that in mind, Bart decided the time to act was the moment the first man stepped off the ladder onto the platform. That would eliminate the possibility of him trying to hide behind the waist-high cockpit coamings, and if he didn’t fall off when he died, the body would be easier to shove overboard to the ground. The second man would likely still be on the ladder or on the ground, but there was little cover close at hand even if he realized what was happening before it was his turn too.

  Bart locked in on the first one and watched him climb the ladder. There was enough ambient light to center the reticle, but not enough to see all the details. He had seen just enough of them to know that both of the intruders were white males, and from the easy way they moved, probably young and fit. It was likely that both of them had prior experience with this sort of thing, probably even before the insurrection. There had never been a shortage of criminals in south Florida, but they surely had more competition these days than ever before.

  Bart’s finger was resting lightly on the trigger as he tracked his target to the top of the ladder. The range was close; less than 40 meters, and with the rifle resting on the trawler’s bulwarks, a botched shot was highly unlikely. The man stepped off the ladder as soon as he was even with the swim platform, and just as Bart hoped he would, he stood there for a moment, studying the yacht from his new perspective while his partner mounted the ladder to follow him. Bart centered the crosshairs on the man’s temple and squeezed the trigger, sending the match-grade 168-grain .308 round downrange. He saw the target immediately disappear from his field of view in the scope and he quickly swept it down to acquire the second one.

  The other man’s reaction was faster than he expected. Whether he saw his partner’s head disintegrate first or heard the rifle blast, Bart wasn’t sure, but he leapt away from the ladder and dove to the ground, crawling as fast as he could in the direction of the blocked-up keel. There was no way he could have pinpointed where the shot came from, but he was keeping low on instinct, heading for the nearest solid cover in the vicinity. It was simply too far in the end though, and he never had a chance. Bart opened up on him with four rapid-fire rounds, sweeping his aim through the man’s line of travel from his legs to his head. He saw his target collapse, the body twitching for a few seconds more and then all was quiet and still again, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Bart watched and waited for several more minutes, scanning the shoreline and the waters of the river once more for any sign of accomplices, but nothing else moved out there. He knew the sound of his rifle shots would have carried a great distance in the still of the night, but if anyone heard them, it was unlikely they would come looking for the source, especially at this hour. Bart stood and made his way aft to the stern of the trawler and descended the ladder to the ground. He would get his photos and secure the dead men’s weapons and kayaks first, and when daylight came, he would dispose of the bodies just as he’d done the last time this happened.

  Seventeen

  BART QUIETLY MADE HIS way over to the Viking 54 where the two would-be looters were sprawled lifeless on the gravel. The first one he’d shot had been carrying a Mossberg 590 12-gauge pump shotgun—a decent close quarters weapon that Bart would gladly add to his growing arsenal. The second man who had tried to crawl for cover never had time to remove his shouldered rifle, which Bart could now see was a Chinese SKS. It wouldn’t be the first one of those he’d taken off the body of a slain foe, but the last time that happened it was in a remote village near the border of Cambodia. Back then he’d been forced to trust his life to the M-16 he’d been issued, but Bart had never liked the Stoner design or the caliber. The .308 he’d used tonight did a better job in every way, and it didn’t matter if the rifle and ammo weighed more, because Bart’s days of humping his gear through the jungle were over—or at least he surely hoped so. He knew his two sons were comfortable with the modern M4 platform derived from that rifle he’d grown to hate, but they’d failed to convince him to give up his Springfield. Bart wondered about his boys on nights like this, but he knew they could take care of themselves. He’d given them the training and attitude early on that they needed to succeed in life, and both had chosen their professions fully understanding the risks, which were greater today than ever before. Bart didn’t know when he’d see them again, especially Eric, but he knew they’d both approve of their old man tonight. Bart might be a long way from his prime at 69 years old, but he could damned well hold his own and both of those boys knew it.

  He powered up his little Sony digital camera and snapped the photos he felt that he needed, making sure to include the weapons next to the bodies. The built-in flash illuminated them well enough even in the dark, but there wasn’t much left of the first one’s face that anyone would be able to recognize. Bart didn’t enjoy the killing but it was becoming necessary now and he wasn’t averse to doing what had to be done. The only hope the country had left was that citizens with honor and the courage to back it up would step up to put down the elements bent on its destruction. These looters might not be terrorists and insurrectionists like the worst of the lot that had started all this, but they were certainly contributing to the disorder and many of them were just as dangerous. Bart had bee
n half expecting things to come to this for years, but when it finally happened the breakdown of law and order came much quicker and was far more widespread than even he could have imagined.

  Wide scale riots and well-planned terror attacks that broke out almost simultaneously from coast to coast had the authorities reeling and citizens in panic mode. The worst part of it all was that no one knew who was going to strike next or where. Radical Islamic jihadists were responsible for some of it in the beginning, but emboldened by the results of their attacks, domestic anarchist groups determined to overthrow the government and get rid of anyone with whom they disagreed struck out at anything and anyone representing the authority they hated.

  The government response, which was swift and forceful, only added fuel to the fire, leading to more violence and unrest, including outright defiance of federal authority by scores of cities and several entire states. With much of the nation’s military power spread thin and depleted because of the wars in Europe and Asia, authority from Washington was being challenged on many fronts. Bart had always dismissed conspiracy theories, but the more he learned of this situation, the more convinced he became that the whole thing had been orchestrated to happen this way from the beginning. The divide that had been building for years between people with irreconcilable ideologies morphed into an unbridgeable chasm. War had come to America—not a conventional war against a common enemy—but a wild and unpredictable outbreak of guerrilla insurgency and insurrection between numerous factions, each with its own agenda. Wave after wave of mass shootings, bombings and vehicle attacks put nearly everyone on the front lines and overwhelmed law enforcement at every level. The truth of the matter was that there was so much going on across the country that few people knew the full extent of it. What news had been available had to be treated with suspicion because of all the propaganda being spread, and that was before south Florida was hit by the hurricane. Now, with most of the power and communications grid down from the storm, there had been little news of anything from the outside.

  Before that latest disaster struck, Bart had been in semi-regular contact with Keith via ham radio. As rural as it was, even Keith’s jurisdiction wasn’t insulated from the violence. As a deputy sheriff of St. Martin Parish, he’d had his hands full with other problems before the storm and had little info to share. Most non-essential federal government agencies had shut down well before summer began and that included NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. There had been little warning the storm was coming other than sporadic reports spread through the amateur radio nets as it made its way through the islands of the West Indies. From what he could piece together of it, Bart figured the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area would get it the worst, and the last time he’d talked to Keith, Bart told him he was going by boat to North Palm Beach to get his granddaughter out of its path before the hurricane arrived.

  He’d arrived to learn that Megan hadn’t even made it home to Florida, but Bart convinced her mother and her stepdad and stepbrother to come back with him anyway. While hurricane-force winds hammered the entire peninsula all the way across to the Gulf, the direct impact danger was far less where Bart lived than on the Atlantic coast. They’d ridden it out okay, but the aftermath left a wake of destruction as severe as any hurricane Bart had experienced in three decades of south Florida living. The damage to the power grid and other infrastructure was irreparable in the present state of the nation, and Bart had no illusions that it would be fixed in the foreseeable future.

  He had no way of knowing the path the storm took after it entered the Gulf, but he was certain it had re-strengthened over those warm waters as so many others before it had. If so, it had to make landfall again somewhere, most likely on the northern coast. Keith’s AO in Louisiana could have taken as hard a hit as Florida—maybe even harder. Whatever the extent of the damage, Bart was certain that people surviving in the strike zones were on their own now, and would be for the foreseeable future. That wasn’t as much of a problem for him as it was for most people, because Bart Branson was prepared. His three new houseguests were having a harder time dealing with it, but they were far better off here with him than anywhere else they could be in that part of the state. He was doing all he could for them, but like everyone else they were going to have to get used to a harsh new reality. The easy life most Americans had known had come to an end.

  It was still nearly four hours until daylight when Bart put his camera away and carried the guns to his office to lock them up. He doubted anyone else would make an attempt on the yard before morning, but he was wired from the action and unable to relax anyway, so he took up his position again on the trawler and settled in to watch, just in case. When dawn came with no more excitement, Bart climbed down from his perch as he brushed away the morning swarms of biting no-see-ums from his face and neck. The rising sun would soon drive them away but they were always a nuisance at this hour on days when the wind was calm. He walked to the wet slips on the other side of the Travelift and stepped aboard the 18-foot aluminum skiff he kept tied up there. After warming up the outboard, he motored around to the little beach and eased his bow up onto the sand where the kayakers had landed their plastic boats. Bart wanted to get rid of the bodies first thing, in case someone came around the yard that morning, as unlikely as that might be. It was a chore, but he managed to drag them one at a time down to the water’s edge next to his boat. Then he picked up a couple of old anchors and a half-rotten mooring line from his collection of cast-off gear piled near the slipway, and put the anchors in his boat. Bart tied each man’s ankles together with short pieces he cut from the line and then he passed one end of the 20-foot remainder through the lashings, securing it with several half hitches before cleating the bitter end to the bow of the skiff. Once he was back aboard, he fired up the 50-horse Yamaha again and backed out into the river, dragging the dead men with him. A channel had been dredged here years ago to accommodate deep-draft vessels, so Bart didn’t have to go far to find sufficient depths. He shackled the two anchors to the line between the cleat and the bodies and after taking the loops off the cleat, tied a couple of stopper knots to keep the shackles from slipping off the bitter end before dropping it into the murky brown water. Bart waited until the bodies sank out of sight before shifting the motor back into gear. The river provided a convenient and permanent means of disposal, especially with all the big gators that were about, and Bart suspected those two wouldn’t be the last he would have to dump there.

  He scanned the river upstream and down before heading back to the dock, not that he expected to see any traffic there this early in the morning. Few boats were moving at all these days, and those that were tended to do so during the midday hours, when most people perceived travel to be safer. Bart couldn’t guard the boatyard day and night by himself, but it was generally safe to leave it and go home for a few hours during the day. He secured the skiff to the dock and went in his office to pour the last stale cup of coffee into his cup before washing out the pot and locking up to go home.

  The last thing he did every morning before he left was climb aboard the Oyster 56 cutter in the yard to see if he could raise anybody or pick up some news transmissions on the ham radio. That boat had the best antenna set up of any in the yard, and Bart had managed to talk to some other operators in Florida but the repeaters in the area were still out of commission since the storm so he’d been unable to get through to anyone outside the immediate region. He was hopeful that someone would have something up and running soon so he could get back in touch with Keith, but it had been weeks now and today was no different. Bart downed the last of his coffee and shut off the station, then climbed down and headed for his skiff.

  Bart’s small house was just a mile and a half up the Caloosahatchee, a hip-roof bungalow set back from the river in a grove of coconut palms so dense it was completely hidden from the water. He had fallen in love with the place from the moment he laid eyes on it nearly thirty years ago, at the same time he realized that south Florida was where
he wanted to be. Bart got his first taste of the tropics in Southeast Asia, and while many of his memories of that first tour in 1969 were quite unpleasant, there was something about the jungle and its exotic vegetation that spoke to his soul. Surrounded by his palms in a place winter barely touched, Bart found that feeling again on the Caloosahatchee. The house that came with his little three-acre wooded plot wouldn’t be anything special to most folks, but it was just right for Bart. He loved the wrap-around porches that added 10 feet of outdoor living space on all four sides, with coconut fronds and giant philodendron leaves creating a screen of jungle greenery that would close in and consume the place if he left it unattended for long.

  Bart spent most of his time at home living on those porches, equipped as they were with hammocks, rocking chairs, his barbecue grill, workbenches and a set of iron barbells in a squat rack to keep him strong. The house itself was just as rustic, with knotty-pine planked floors and cabinets and furniture Bart had handcrafted from reclaimed wood. He had a small bedroom in the upstairs loft and a kitchen and single bath shoehorned into the space below it, but the rest of the bungalow was just one big open room with a few shelves along the walls and lots of hooks and nails for hanging his miscellaneous possessions. It wasn’t the kind of house most women would be interested in, but Bart didn’t want a woman around full-time anyway. Making it work for his houseguests took a bit of rearranging, but Bart was happy sleeping in one of his hammocks or on a spare mattress he laid out on the floor in a corner, relinquishing his modest bedroom to his former daughter in law and her new husband.