He’s still out there.”
“No he’s not. He just came in the door and joined Rosie.”
Frank looked over and saw them. Jeb made eye contact and nodded, then put his arm around Rosie and pulled her close.
“Let’s go tell people goodnight. I want to go home and hit the sack,” Frank said. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
Jane nodded. They walked around, saying their goodbyes, and then walked out into the cool night air.
“Okay, now that we’re out of there, what did you and Jeb really talk about?”
“I think he was having a hard time running through our situation in his mind, and seeing a good end to it.”
“I have the same problem.”
“I understand. It’ll be alright.”
“You’re not worried, Frank?”
“If I thought we were just going to hang out in this RV Park and hope for the best, I’d be worried.”
“You don’t think we’re going to stay here long term?”
“Remains to be seen, sweetie…but moats and dogs and razor wire aren’t going to be enough to keep us safe if a few of those trucks full of Islamists decide to make a detour here.”
“You still think they know where we are?”
“No way to tell for sure, but given the facts as we know them, I don’t see how they couldn’t know. I’m hoping that we aren’t high enough on their priority list to bother with, until after I’ve got those chips figured out.”
“There’s something I wanted to quiz you on,” Jane said as they approached the coach. Frank unlocked the door and opened it, and Lucy ran down the steps, got up on Jane’s shins. “Let’s take her for a quick walk before we settle in.”
“You read my mind, sweetie,” Frank said, reaching in for her leash. He got her hooked up, and they kept walking. “What do you want to quiz me about?”
“You aren’t going to trust the army to go get the enemy leadership. You can’t.”
“True.”
“So what are you planning on doing?”
“I have a two-step plan, after the chips are cracked.”
They walked along silently for a moment.
“Frank, do I have to coax every bit of this out of you?”
“No, but there are still a lot of people around here that we don’t know very well. I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise not to tell anybody else. Not Jasmine. Not Hilda. Nobody.”
“Have you told Jerry?”
“Only part of it. Same with Jeb, and those are the two people here that I trust the most.”
“You really think these people are going to blab?”
“To each other, yes, and once it gets beyond the person I tell, I’m out of the loop and can’t control where it goes. You know, Jerry tells Jasmine, and she tells Rosie, and she tells Mary…you get it.”
“You’re thinking several steps ahead, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You already know how to crack these things, don’t you?”
“I have a pretty good idea, yes. They probably used concepts I developed to pull it off.”
“You’ve been making it sound like it’s going to be more difficult that it is.”
“Yes.”
“You’re buying time for a later step.”
“This is why I adore you,” Frank said, smiling. “You’re smart as a whip.”
“What are the two steps?”
“Step one is to locate the enemy leadership and take them out. Step two is to flood the internet with Android and iPhone applications that will let anybody and everybody know where the bad guys are, be they in the next state, the next town, or two feet away. These two steps will be launched almost simultaneously. Step one will be started just hours before step two, and step two will be on auto-pilot, just in case something happens to us.”
“You’re going around the government completely.”
“Oh, the army will use this, but everybody else will know about it too. That will completely neutralize the enemy’s strategy, and no bad guys in our military or our government are going to be able to do anything to stop it.”
“How’re you going to take out the two