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CHAPTER2
It wasa hot day in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, but the heat didn’t bother the men engrossed in heavy labor. The cave was cool, but they’d also left the hidden door raised to catch a breeze. The man known as Vern Eldon had barely broken a sweat, but that was because he was used to hard work in debilitating temperatures. The same was said for his men, who had been through every grueling task with him from Day One. His muscles looked like they were cut from steel, and his abs could have been used in a logo for Iron Man.
A slight breeze, courtesy of the two national forests that encompassed most of the range, moved the air around, cooling it slightly. He and the rest of the men had been able to work at a steady pace because of that. They’d been moving crates around and shifting the contents for most of the morning. It was taking a while because most of the contents were volatile and required gentle, careful handling.
They had raised the carefully constructed, well-concealed door that resembled a garage door to let some air into the huge cave. That door had been one of his genius inventions. It had taken them weeks to set it up, installing the tracks and motor and then gluing rocks and boulders together so when the door was closed, it looked like nothing more than a wall section of the mountain. Maybe the result of a rockslide. He felt a tiny surge of pride every time he looked at it. No one would guess that behind it was a huge cave with supplies, cots for sleeping, and everything they needed whenever they locked themselves away in it to plan a mission.
Mission.
People would laugh at his use of the word, but, it accurately described what they did. They conducted missions to save the country from the money-hungry and power-hungry politicians who knew nothing about patriotism. The Loyalists were happy to counteract that.
Now, he stopped to take a break and think about what was ahead for them.
Five years ago, he and Stryker had walked away from a military that frustrated and angered them and a government that used people up and threw them away for their own selfish reasons. They had recruited very carefully, choosing ex-military who they personally knew carried a grudge as well as people who had been screwed over by the government. At least in their opinion, and Vern believed that was the only one that counted.
The core group was formed with twenty carefully chosen people. They had slowly expanded as they refined their mission, until now they had a strong organization. They chose to call themselves the Loyalists, swearing allegiance to a country they wanted to remake. People referred to them as a far-right white supremacist group, but they had a dedicated mission they continued to refine. Vern hated it when people said they weren’t patriots. Fuck. They were more patriotic than most of the people in the country. They just had the courage to show it.
“Let’s take a quick break,” he told the other men. “Enjoy the sunshine and this nice breeze for a minute. You’ve all been working real hard.”
That was the truth. They’d been at it since early morning, having driven the last of the trucks with their loads up to the caves while it was still dark and begun unloading them at first light. First, as they’d been doing since the start of this project, they’d divided everything up according to final destination. The cargo consisted of explosives and a variety of weapons, everything from assault rifles to semiautomatic to shotguns. Each one had a specific task assigned to it. With the vast, mixed crowd they’d be firing into, they wanted to make sure they had every eventuality covered.
And each truck had a separate cargo. They did not mix the arms and explosives for a variety of very good reasons, not the least being they each had separate objectives when they reached their ultimate destinations. He’d also had the drivers training how to haul their load, which was highly combustible. He didn’t want it exploding before it reached its target destination.
This project was five years in the planning. There were a lot of steps to it. Identifying one that would carry enough weight to make people pay attention. One that would do the greatest damage and establish them as a group to be reckoned with. And one that would establish them as a group that obeyed their own laws, rejected the rule of the United States, and had the balls to create their own army and set their own laws.
They had collected everything very slowly over the past several months, purchasing in small lots. Vern had drilled into them that if they did too many at one time, someone—no telling who but some unexpected bystander—might spot them doing it and start asking questions. Large quantities of explosives and arms weren’t usually purchased by civilians. If they were, all kinds of red flags started waving, and nosy people started asking too many questions. They couldn’t have that, and they certainly didn’t want to have to eliminate nosy people. Getting rid of those three who stumbled into them over the past couple of years and making it look like accidents had been more than he wanted to handle. They’d chosen this place for its isolation, and they did not want to call attention to what they were doing.
They’d been purchasing and driving in the supplies for the past several months and storing them carefully. When they’d designed this project, Vern had studied the life span of different explosives and the best conditions for storing. They finally were now pretty well set for their project.
Vern had organized this group more than five years ago when he angrily left the military and decided he and the right people could do a better job running this country. He’d recruited Stryker, and slowly and carefully they’d put the Loyalists together. They had tested their plans with several small events, all of which had gone off without a problem. Those events had also established the Loyalists as a force to be reckoned with. Now they were ready for the big one, which would put them in positions of authority to run the country properly.
“We’ve been planning this since we first came together as a private, dedicated army,” he reminded everyone when they gathered that morning. “We searched for just the right situation, got every bit of information about it we could, and outlined it bit by bit. You’ve all had input, and I think you should all feel very good about the fact that we’re finally going to have positions of authority in this country. We’re finally getting rid of the people who would destroy this country with their weak laws and unwillingness to drop the hammer when necessary.” He looked around. “Right?”
“Right,” everyone shouted in agreement and punched the air with a fist.
“We’ll put the right laws in place and take back the country that is rightfully ours. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” they all shouted again.
