Chapter 11

Once the construction was well underway, it was easy to see that my initial worry about not having everything ready in time for next spring’s planting had been groundless. Even if half of the construction men quit today, everything would be finished in time. Last night, my instincts told me it was time to visit my family. Even though I’d already told them about the divorce over the phone, I dreaded the trip. Both my mother and my sister Janie would be pushing single women at me faster than I could fend them off. I flew back to North Carolina and made the five-hour drive to my folks’ place in my pickup truck.

Their reaction when I got there and exited my pickup truck was far from what I’d pictured. Dad and my two brothers both hugged me, expressing their sorrow for the way Jacqueline had turned out. After my two sisters-in-law did the same, so did Mom and Janie. They did snicker when I started looking around as if I was expecting someone else. They knew exactly what I was thinking. “We know you need some time to get over Jacqueline,” Janie explained sympathetically, although I was still sure that I saw a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Over supper, I explained more about the deal for the property I had sold and the land that I bought in Mississippi. “There is plenty of good farmland nearby that I could buy if anyone else wants to move there, or I could always use good help,” I offered. Mom had complained since I finished college that I lived too far away from them. The looks passing between my parents and my brothers made me think that something else was going on here that I wasn’t aware of. Because I’d avoided coming home since I caught Jacqueline cheating on me, I wasn’t up to date. Rather than press the issue, I left the offer open, knowing that they would tell me when they were ready.

My old bedroom layout was almost exactly the way I had left it. Two sewing machines had replaced my large desk, a desk I had made from a door set atop two old-fashioned wooden filing cabinets that I’d bought from a second-hand store. The old set of shelves I’d built were now filled with bolts of cloth and small plastic cabinets filled with a dozen or more sets of small, plastic drawers that were jammed full of buttons, snaps, and anything else you could need while sewing. My old file cabinets were full of patterns for sewing. Still, I could walk through the room in the dark if necessary.

As usual, I was up before the rooster in the morning. Mom was already starting breakfast and everyone else headed out to take care of the animals. When I headed after them, Mom stopped me, motioning to a seat at the table. “Your offer comes at just the right time. Mister Kozlov has purchased all the surrounding farms. We’re the last holdout and he’s pressuring us to sell to him. Two days ago, someone fired a rifle through the window and into the front room, barely missing your father. The sheriff only spent ten minutes looking into it saying that nobody had been hurt and the shooter was obviously long gone.”

Even before she finished her explanation, I had my cell phone out, dialing. “Dwight, Jim Reynolds here,” I said when the phone was answered. “I have a problem I’m hoping you can look into for me,” I said as Mom’s eyebrows rose. I explained what Mom had told me, listened for a few seconds, thanked Dwight, and hung up. “It will be looked into,” I promised.

“The sheriff won’t like anyone stepping on his toes,” Mom warned.

“Too bad for him; hopefully his toes won’t be where they get stepped on.”

“What are you up to?” she asked warily.

“I’m going out after breakfast to get what I need to protect my family. After that, I’m coming back here and don’t plan to leave until the problem is resolved.”

“Jiiiiim,” she said in a warning tone.

“Mother, I’m not going to do anything illegal or immoral. I’m just going to watch your backs while friends of mine look into the problem.”

Mom warned Dad that I was up to something when he came back in for breakfast. I reiterated my promise that I wouldn’t do anything illegal or immoral, and promised that anything I did would be with the full knowledge of federal law enforcement. That got curious looks from my entire family since they all knew about my volunteer job. They just didn’t realize how much help I gave the Marshals Service.

After breakfast, I jumped into my pickup truck and made a phone call to the Marshal’s office in Alexandria, since they had jurisdiction over this area. Dwight had already called and warned them, and they had two Marshals en route to the farm to interview my parents and to investigate the shooting. Others would review Mister Kozlov’s finances. They wouldn’t say anything over an unsecured line, but what they didn’t ask gave me the impression that federal agencies were already aware of Mr. Kozlov. When I asked, the Alexandria office cautiously suggested a gun dealer they occasionally dealt with in Norfolk.

Two hours later, I entered the gun shop, surprised that it was so small. “Mr. Willis, I’m Jim Reynolds,” I introduced myself, showing him my badge. “I was told you would be expecting me,” I added.

“Straight to the point; a man after my own heart,” he chuckled. After locking up the shop, he pressed on the wall behind him; the wall slid aside to reveal a safe combination dial. After dialing the combination, he rotated the lever ninety degrees and closed the panel again. From there, he moved to an adjacent section of the wall and pressed two more spots that caused a larger panel to open. Behind that panel was a vault door that he opened.

“Anyone trying to break in will set off enough alarms to summon half the cops in eastern Virginia here before they can break in,” he chuckled as he swung the vault door open. I gasped when I walked through the door and down the steps. There were enough weapons inside the large underground warehouse to equip a small army.

“You wanted an MP5/10 and an XM2010?” he asked as he pulled an MP5/10 out of a rack holding at least fifty of them. I’d used both weapons at the federal training center in Glynco and really liked them. I had just never gotten around to actually buying them since I already had my AR-15 and a sniper rifle.

“Do you have one with the tritium sights?” I asked. Smiling knowingly, he replaced the first weapon and drew out a second. “Very nice,” I commented as I looked it over. I got a hard case to carry it in, along with five extra magazines and a suppressor. I also bought ten boxes of match grade ammunition. As an afterthought, I bought five more boxes of ammo, having no idea when I might need them or when I might be back.

“Are you sure you have enough for all of this?” he asked. Smiling, I handed him a copy of the letter of credit from my bank that I had used to let the realtor in Mississippi know I was serious about buying the properties there.

“I only used about a quarter of this, so I’m good for the rest,” I told him.

“Are you sure I can’t interest you in anything else?” he chuckled when he saw the number on the letter of credit.

“Yeah,” I replied when I saw something that I kept meaning to buy but always forgot. “I keep meaning to buy a good 12-gauge shotgun,” I mused as I looked at the start of his shotgun selection.

“I can do that. Let’s get the XM 2010 first,” he replied eagerly as he led me deeper into the cavernous warehouse.

I continued to check the MP5/10 as I followed him until he stopped at another wall full of gun racks where he withdrew the XM 2010, complete with all the bells and whistles.

“Very nice,” I said as I looked the rifle over. I got the hard carrying case for this one, too, along with every possible accessory.

“Shotgun?” he reminded me. I nodded and grinned.

“Considering your other choices of weapons, I would suggest this one,” he said after a short trek through the shotgun area where he pulled out a puke green hard plastic case and set it on the counter. “This is the 12-gauge Remington 870 MCS. The MCS stands for Modular Combat Shotgun.”

It took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at once he opened the case.

“Holy smokes,” I exclaimed. “It really is modular. You can choose the stock or go with the pistol grip, and then choose from three different barrel lengths. Heck, it’s even got a rail and optic sights, although I don’t know why you’d need sights on a shotgun,” I chuckled. “I always considered a shotgun to be point and shoot.”

“I’ll take one now, and I want a dozen shipped to my home. These will make great Christmas gifts for some law enforcement buddies to whom I owe favors. Make it three dozen, instead, and just ship them to the agencies. Here’s the address for the Raleigh PD SWAT team. Send them six. Send ten to the Marshal’s Service SOG team,” I said as I wrote their address beneath the Raleigh PD address. “Send five each to the Marshal’s office, the FBI office, the ATF office, and the DEA office in Raleigh. Add a note to each of those shipments that one is a personal gift for the head guy, and the others are for field use. I think that’s thirty-six, isn’t it?” I asked. He nodded, concentrating too much to talk.

“Go ahead and add an XM2010 just like mine to each order, along with a thousand rounds of match grade .300 Winchester Magnum for each and a hundred rounds for each of the shotguns,” I decided.

“Anything else?” he asked hopefully.

“I need motion detectors to secure a perimeter five hundred yards from a target,” I commented.

“I can do that,” he said almost giddily.

I also bought available-light binoculars, a pair of night vision goggles since mine were still in North Carolina, and a type IV vest for everyone in my family. Once I paid for everything, I asked about the nearest range where I could sight in the guns that were for me.

Still grinning knowingly, he led me through yet another door to an underground range. “Wow!” I gasped when I saw it. The tiny shop I first walked into gave me no clue that it fronted for such a remarkable underground store and range.

An hour later, I was grinning as I policed my brass and cleaned both rifles before putting them away in their cases.

Closer to home, I stopped by another store that I’d visited when I was in high school. I bought several small helium tanks like those that you use for filling balloons at a birthday party, along with a weather balloon. My last stop was an electronics shop I found advertised online. There I bought a special sensor package usually meant to rest atop a pole of some sort.

Before dark, I set up motion detectors along the edges of the property and more IR cameras covering the perimeter of the house. Everything fed back to my laptop via the house Wi-Fi, as well as to Janie’s laptop inside the house.

Once it was dark, I had the family stay in the back of the house in case anyone shot into the front room again. I left lights and the TV on in the front room, and moved a couple of pillows so the shadow seen through the front curtains looked like someone’s head.

Then I inflated the weather balloon, and duct taped the sensor package to one of the three, sixty-pound fishing lines I used to tether the balloon. The package had IR detectors to warn me if anyone started getting close to the house. I set it up so the feed went to both my laptop and Janie’s laptop, along with the feed from the sensors covering the outside of the house. My family each had their rifle and pistol and knew how to use them if it came down to it, including my sisters-in-law, and my older nieces and nephews.

I set myself up in the top of the barn where I could watch the road and the house. I had hay bales in front of the lawn chair I sat in, and jury-rigged a coffee pot so I had hot coffee to keep me awake. The sensors and/or the weather balloon would let me know if anyone approached from the back or far side of the house, as well as the front. I quickly decided to forego the night vision goggles when the headlights from a car coming down the road blinded me for a short time.

Shortly after 9 p.m., a car stopped up the road, just out of sight of the house. When a man carrying a rifle got out, I called the Marshal’s Service to let them know. I suggested that the local sheriff didn’t seem very interested in catching the shooter for some reason. Then I called the house to make sure everyone was still in the back. They were.

There was no way that I could get to the man without being noticed in the short time I had before he got close enough to shoot at the house. Since I was to one side of him, once he fired a shot at the house, I shot him in the thigh. My next three shots from the upper door in the barn flattened the three tires of his car that I could see, and the final one went into the radiator.

Now we had a stalemate; I wasn’t willing to approach him, and he was pinned down and bleeding. Ten minutes later, a sheriff’s car drove up the road. Without even slowing down, he drove right past the car I shot up and drove straight to the house. The burly (okay, fat) deputy sheriff walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. I called the house and told them it was the sheriff, and that the shooter hadn’t moved for at least five minutes, but they should still keep from exposing themselves in the open doorway, and they should have someone cover the sheriff.

With the cell phone still in his hand so I could hear, Dad answered the door. “I need to talk to whoever shot up that car down the road,” the sheriff said angrily. Since he hadn’t even slowed down to look at the car, there was no way he could know more than the fact that it had a flat rear tire.