B.B.U.S.A. (Buying Back the United States of America) (30 page)

“You bring up valid concerns, my friend, yet I don’t know logically what we could do differently this late at night to prepare for better weaponry. I can tell you the only weapons I saw on the coast were 9mm side arms. I’d bet they show up here expecting to bust in the front door of my grandmother’s house and take us out with silencers. I truly would be surprised if they had anything bigger than hand guns. Why don’t you see to the guns and what grub you can find and I’ll grab sleeping bags and a tent from Grandma’s attic. Once we’re packed and on the road I’ll pull over out of sight and we can catch a few Z’s in the truck. It will take David at least five hours depending on which scenic route he picks.”

“I hope to hell you are right on that assumption, but even that word ‘assume’ can be broken down to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ I guess we’d have the height advantage on the side of the mountain and thick stone walls that even AR-15’s won’t penetrate. We’d also have the surprise factor too. This might work. Okay, I’ll get on it.”

Leo realized they had crossed the line now and were preparing for real, possibly lethal, action.

Joyce, Sarah, and the boys, with the help of the remaining staff, boarded up and secured J.J.’s Restaurant within an hour and a half. The boarders that were on the premises were moved and set up at a nearby hotel. Other boarders were contacted at work. Within two hours everyone had been accounted for, moved, and money refunded or awaiting them at their new hotel. The representative from the insurance company arrived to officially record the damage. Two police detectives stayed the entire time. One went with Joyce to the bank and to the small airport as she had to withdraw funds for employee salaries and the necessary refunds. She managed to charter a small plane that would fly the family to Windhoek where they could hook up with international flights in order to leave the country.

At the insurance company’s request, two loyal employees moved into one of the now vacant apartments to keep an eye on the premises. The company agreed to pay their salaries as groundskeepers until the claim was fully settled, and they also wrote Joyce out a check for fifty thousand rand to take care of her expenses and lodging. By midafternoon Joyce, Sarah, and the boys were in a small Cessna aircraft flying over some extraordinary terrain on their way to the capital city where they would make further arrangements to depart the country.

Joyce had packed up her most prized possessions into a small carry-on case. She always spent her extra money on fine jewelry. She knew she was wearing jewelry that far exceeded the amount of valuables permitted to leave the country, but did not care, as she didn’t expect to ever return. She had Sarah decked out in expensive jewelry pieces too. Joyce withdrew the most money allowable and had it converted into traveler’s checks, and left the remaining thirty-five thousand in her savings account.

If she never returned she would instruct Ursula to retrieve the money, as her name was also on the account. She figured that Ursula could divide fifteen thousand among the employees and keep the other twenty thousand for herself. It would pay for her doctor bills and give her some money to survive on until she was once again gainfully employed. Joyce told the insurance representative that she would be in contact to have a settlement check sent to her and that as far as she was concerned they could keep the buildings and the land.

At that point she did not want to have anything further to do with J.J.’s. After all, how could she go back and re-establish a thriving business in a small community when a man had just died there kicking a hand grenade around in the dining room. The other eighteen injured would not be likely to return either. She was convinced that her days of running a business in Swakopmund had just come to a screeching halt.

Joyce was an optimist. She believed in what the Baha’i religion called “radiant acquiescence.” Undoubtedly it was for the best anyway. She wasn’t getting any younger, and in that decisive moment, she realized how precious time really was. She knew she wanted to spend her remaining time near her family. She wanted to be close to her grandsons and be a bigger part of their lives. She felt compelled to be closer to keep an eye on her mother as well. It could have all been over in one moment. She knew now what was most important to her. She loved Africa and she enjoyed the people. It would forever pulse in her veins, but it was time to go home. Traykie was nearly full grown already. Soon Chris, too, would be looking directly in her eyes. Perhaps the entire event was just a blessing in disguise. She had enough money in jewelry that she would not be a burden on society, with or without any insurance settlement check.

Frankly, money was no longer important. Living was important. She worried about Leo and Doug. She could not remember when last she heard him use such vulgarity, if ever. He was such a stubborn boy growing up. Now she preferred to call it strong-willed. She hoped that he would not do anything foolish. Something clearly had to be done, but would he think it through and not just act angrily and bull-headed? They couldn’t all be on the run for the rest of their lives, but she would certainly have felt better about the whole thing if Sarah and Leo and she could have sat down and discussed it. Perhaps together they could have come up with a workable plan that didn’t involve cowboy heroics.

She looked over at Sarah in the seat across from her and wondered what she was thinking. She was probably equally concerned about Leo and their own safety. Traykie was staring out the window, taking in the landscape from the aerial view. Perhaps he would see some animals, which might take his mind away from the grim thoughts they were all most likely sharing. In the little plane, all four passenger seats were window seats, so Chris seemed happy. Joyce peered over the back of the seat in front of her to see how he was doing. He was curled up in a little ball and fast asleep. She let out a little sigh and was actually glad, as she didn’t think she nor Sarah had the energy to deal with him at the moment. Hopefully, everything would be back to normal by the time they returned to Boise.

The two men raided Leo’s grandmother’s cupboards for food and utensils. Leo was glad she was a bit of a hoarder and not one to ever have empty cupboards. They loaded up the truck with guns, grub, and camping materials for three and left a message taped to the front door that read: “Dear Grandma, sorry we missed you. We will be camping at Custer for a few days. Hope to see you soon. Love, Leo and Doug.” He wanted the B.B.U.S.A. to follow them to their own turf, but wanted to do it in such a way that no one would get suspicious that they had been tipped off by Florin.

They gassed up, and took some extra cans of gas from grandma’s garage, just in case David might be low on fuel after driving over from Boise. If it wasn’t on his list he probably wouldn’t think of refueling in Stanley. They bought a bunch of quick snacks and jerky, vitamin waters, sodas, chips, and anything they could think of that they might want and didn’t already have.

The two of them drove up the long slanting Main Street of Challis and headed up Garden Creek. The familiar ride went over Big Hill and dropped to the headwaters of Mill Creek. It was too dark to appreciate the beauty of the country they were driving through. Leo only saw the single track dirt road in his headlights as they crossed Mill Creek Summit and continued down to the headwaters of Yankee Fork.

Doug sat alertly with a rifle across his lap. The new information had made a believer out of him. He wasn’t sure where the bad dudes might be. If they caught David before he got out of the house, they might have found out what old cabin they were heading for and the last thing he and Leo wanted would be a welcoming party and a nasty surprise. That scenario wasn’t likely, it would take at least four hours to drive at night from Boise, and only an hour for Leo and Doug, but they hadn’t started right away either and couldn’t be sure of anything at this point in the game. They decided to pull over in a little camping area by the creek tucked behind a few trees and sleep a couple of hours. Much to their surprise they both fell asleep quickly, leaning on opposite doors.

After a few hours of much needed rest, they returned to the open road. The sun was not yet visible in the pre-dawn sky as Leo and Doug reached the edge of the old, deserted mining town of Custer. They slowed the truck to a near stop as they came around the bend below the old mill, where they could see the remains of the town stretched in front of them. The air outside was cool and crisp. The aspen and birch trees were turning yellow and orange. The museum in Custer was already closed for the season, and all the buildings boarded up for the deep winter snows to come, but luckily, the public outhouses were still unlocked until after deer hunting season.

Not noticing any movement or vehicles in the small ghost town, Leo pulled the truck up alongside the home that had belonged to the Pfeiffer family about 100 years ago. The Pfeiffer house was located below the remains of Miss Lou’s stone cabin.

Leo and David had both volunteered their labor at the Custer Museum one summer. The ghost town was originally run on donations and manned by dedicated volunteers until it became a part of ‘The Land of The Yankee Fork State Park’ during Idaho’s Centennial Year.

Tuff and Edna McGown collected most of the artifacts and had lived in Custer with their family off and on for many years. Through their care and custodial work, much was preserved for posterity. After Tuff’s death, an organization called “The Friends of Custer” operated the site during the summers on mostly volunteer labor. The two had spent a full season working painstakingly hard helping to re-open miles of trails that crisscrossed through the old ghost town. Leo noticed the condition of the trails now that the Forest Service and Idaho State Parks were operating the area. He remembered the hours of backbreaking work he had done to reclaim the ancient trails, and he shook his head in disappointment, seeing how overgrown they had become.

They were a little surprised that David wasn’t already waiting for them. Had he gotten away in time? But then again, he remembered having made the silly statement of telling David to take the scenic route. He wondered what that meant to David. Would go over Trail Creek Summit from Sun Valley and come up through Clayton?

They were hopeful he would arrive soon. Perhaps David would hold the key to the password in the files he was bringing. Leo just knew that the answer to the password had to lie somewhere in those documents. He was having difficulty concentrating on the password, as he not only worried about David, but was continuously thinking about his own family as well.

Leo left the truck semi-visible so that David would see it, but a stray late tourist might not notice it. Leo and Doug took their rifles and a pair of binoculars and walked up the side of the mountain where the old stone cabin overlooked what was left of the town site of Custer. They leaned the rifles up against the remaining walls and began to remove small boulders and rocks that had fallen inside the stone walls.

Miss Lou’s stone cabin was unique in several ways. It was constructed of stone rather than wood and was the only known cabin in the area constructed with an actual fireplace.

Miss Lou had made a rather unfortunate marriage to a man who often failed to come home, or even provide her with food or rent. Her brother had come to visit her one day and found her in a deplorable state. He’d immediately commissioned a stonemason to build her a sturdy rock one-room building on the hill overlooking the town. It was cool in the summer and warm and snug in the winter. An overflowing cool spring by the side of the house furnished her with fresh clean drinking water. Her brother had kept track of her and furnished her with groceries from time to time.

Her brother had died in November 1904 under mysterious circumstances. Miss Lou, who had begun life as the daughter of a wealthy family from the South and had danced at Grover Cleveland’s inaugural ball, had asked the stage coach driver to take her to Challis. She left Custer without a backward glance never to reside in that stone cabin again.

David loved Miss Lou’s old cabin and he desperately wanted to restore it to its original form. He’d offered to do it for free, but the red tape that went with a historical site had made it impossible, and he had given up hope of ever getting the opportunity to actually restore it.

Leo and Doug felt that it was as good a place as any to set up the tent and their belongings. The stone cabin provided great shelter as it was recessed into the side of the hill, was located twenty feet from a spring with clean drinking water, and provided a strategic view. From the cabin they could see down to the truck and also the road in both directions.

The walls of the cabin were still about five feet high and constructed with mortar and solid rock. They were nearly two feet thick and could easily stop a bullet. The framed-in portion that had surrounded her one window still remained, as well as the frame for the front door. The door had long ago been removed or rotted away, but it still provided a perfect hideout. The two men cleared stones, sticks, and debris for nearly an hour. There was plenty of room within the boundary of the old stone walls for the six-man tent.

The tent had been erected and all their supplies carried up to the cabin by the time David finally arrived. Leo was relieved to see his shiny white Bravada slowly driving down the road that had once been the mile-long, one and only street of Custer. David must have seen Doug’s truck as he parked next to the old Pfeiffer cabin where he had lived the summer he volunteered at Custer. Leo and Doug went down to meet him, still carrying their handguns concealed and their rifles in hand. David cautiously got out of the Bravada and looked around in every direction before closing the door.