Ruskie radios. spectrum.ieee.org
“Wait, that’s a good point” Jaime added. “They must be far better than ours and have all the channels, military and civilian and a power source too. Claire, were you ever taken to this safe house somewhere on Channing?”
“No, but I probably met the people from that post as we all gathered in the parking lot of the motel when we left in our cars on Saturday. I might even recognize a vehicle. But Channing is a long street. I don’t know.”
“I do” Samantha said excitedly. “I remember now that when the driver from Hayward was heading back there and talking to our captor in the hotel suite it was on speakerphone and I overheard him say he was on Fulton Street and would be there in an instant. So it must be near that intersection.”
“That’s only five minutes away” Jaime added, “and they don’t know Claire is on our side. If we can find the house, Charlie and I can pack two handguns and while Claire knocks on the door and is invited in, we’ll overpower them and get the radios. We’ve only been talking to a few amateurs out there with our set and they know next to nothing. With military and police bands we could really get some info. And Claire and Samantha too, you said these radio guys were more like geeks than bad guys.”
We all gave the proposal a moment’s thought. It seemed worth a try.
Then Samantha added in, “I’ll go too. I know Russian and I can fight.”
There was no arguing with that. We all decided it was a go. They took the two handguns, some duct tape and rope and set out in the Mustang, Jaime driving. Just a few houses up from Fulton Claire recognized a familiar vehicle in a driveway. She knocked on the front door announcing her name while the other three crouched on the porch. The Russian who answered recognized her and opened it wide. He was on the floor in a second and tied up after a brief scuffle. His mouth was taped shut before he could make more noise. There was no one else downstairs, but upstairs they could hear someone talking in Russian. Through a half-open door they could see him speaking, his back to them and wearing his headset. He hadn’t heard a thing. In another instant they had him tied up also, and they had two powerful radios and another generator and batteries and a strange book of codes written in Russian. They moved both the fellows to a couch in the living room with loose bonds, which they knew they could wiggle out of in half an hour. They didn’t want to hurt them; they just wanted the radios. They loaded the equipment into the trunk and took off, not even looting the well-stocked cupboards in the kitchen, wasting no time in case somebody else might show up.
Back at the house, as they pulled into the driveway, we were ecstatic. We locked the gates again and carried all the new equipment to the basement. We even had to carry down a third desk from one of the bedrooms, just to hold all of it. Now we had three stations and three chairs, ready to intercept communications from around the globe. That den was slowly taking on the look of a small newsroom, a communication center, an eagle’s nest.
While the others were busy setting up the new gear I took Mary, Jane, Samantha and Jason to my study, opened up the safe and took out four more wafers, which they promptly consumed. I‘d talked to Jaime about it and he thought it an excellent idea. If everyone around us was at the top of their game, we had the best chances of surviving the coming troubles. Then I asked Samantha to step out with me in the hallway, privately.
“I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done, especially for Scout. You did such a brave job saving the others; I’m at a loss for words. You’re a heroine. I wish I were that decisive. And I hope you can reconcile with Claire so that we remain a tight-knit family. I’m in love with her. If you sat down together and took her hand, you’d know all that she’s been through. Do me that favor, tomorrow, take her hand and see.”
She nodded with a smile that she would.
“Thank you; you’re an angel.” I said truthfully.
Before we returned to the basement, I asked Jaime what else he’d seen on his trip down the hill.
“The grocery store’s closed. It isn’t even boarded up, just abandoned with the windows smashed in. We passed several other larger stores like that. We also drove by a few running cars. When we were in the house on Channing Way no one bothered us. I could see people in windows looking at us. But no one came out, which was great because we didn’t need any secondary problems. I don’t know what’s going on in everybody’s heads. It’s like they’re in a state of suspended animation or dazed. I suppose that’ll all change when they run out of food and water.”
“Yes, it surely will. I can promise you that. The government has got to get its act together right away, get some water flowing again and get some lights lit up to show it’s still in control and can set everything right. Let’s go downstairs and see what they’re up to.”
Back in the basement, Charlie sat at the middle desk with the big Russian set, Naomi at the table next to his with the smaller unit and Jason in the far corner with the old shortwave. Scout was sitting in Naomi’s lap, all ears, wanting to help in any way she could. Charlie was orchestrating the operation.
“Naomi I want you to monitor these bandwidths.”
He scribbled some numbers on the sheet of a pad and handed it to her.
“Scout you take this pad and write down every frequency where we make contact and who we reach and where, and the exact time. You're our log keeper.”
“But I can remember everything in my head” Scout said.
“I know you can, little darling. But you might not be here. You might be sleeping when someone else needs the information.”
“Better yet, let’s keep a separate log for each radio. Roland, could you get us larger pads and more pens?” Charlie asked. “It’s the only way to be professional.”
“There’s some right here.” I opened a desk drawer.
Naomi interrupted us. “Charlie I’m picking up a policeman from somewhere. He’s calling his sergeant about a gunfight.”
“Wait till he’s done talking and then tell him who we are and that we’re here to help in any way we can. Then ask him what police force he’s with.”
“Who are we?” was her next question.
Charlie pondered this for a second.
“Tell him we’re ‘Roland house’. Don’t tell him anything about our location. We don’t want them swinging by and taking all our equipment. Just say that we’re in the East Bay and that we’re civilians ready to help pass on any info we get.”
Naomi broke in and said exactly that. Then she got a quick reply from the sergeant.
“Thanks, Roland house, you may be able to help us in a big way. This is San Francisco. We’re with the mayor. He’s got one old shortwave and he’s on this other frequency. If you can get a hold of Sacramento and have them call us, that would be great. We need their instructions. We’re in the dark.”
Charlie took up Naomi’s mike.
“Will do San Francisco. We have several radios on hand with all the bandwidths, civil and military. We’ll pass on that frequency to anyone in government we can get a hold of, and we’ll get back to you in one hour.”
“Thanks Roland house. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Scout!” Charlie said in his loud voice. “Are you writing all this down. Note the number on Naomi’s dial and the exact time. We have important work to do.”
Claire stepped in. “Let me take a pad” she said gently. “I think you might need more than one stenographer if things get busy. Maybe Samantha or Jane could help also.”
And so it began, the contacts, the record keeping, the relaying of information, the birth of a communications center. Within half an hour Charlie got a hold of some ham in Bakersfield who gave us enough information to reach Sacramento, the governor’s office, and we put them in touch with the mayor. Jason stayed on one frequency which was their way of contacting us. The more people we reached, the more the calls came flooding back with requests or info, building a network and multi-directional flow of information. Jason called it a brand new internet and was thrilled to be one of the very first on board.
The girls were the busiest of all, just recording all the info. I had some bulletin board sized sheets of paper in my office and we posted them up with tacks on the wall in front of the radios and with a Sharpie listed all of our most important contacts for everyone to keep in mind. Then we changed Jason’s band for our most important contacts. We had to get rid of the chatter coming in from hams all over the hemisphere. We got what we could from them, what little news, and gave brief replies but we didn’t have the staff or the time to give each caller a detailed report of what was happening in everyone’s backyard.
“How do you spell Saskatchewan?” Scout asked, still helping with notes.
“That’s a place in Canada honey.” Her mother replied. “If we had a map I could show you.”
“If we had a map” I thought to myself. “Yes, that would help.”
I went to the library and found a collection of old, fold out road maps, one for the Western States, another of the Eastern Seaboard and one of the Central Plains on a slightly smaller scale. By cutting and taping them to the end wall next to Jason we had a crude but useful tool. I had Mary and Scout make up pins with tiny triangular paper flags attached to them in three colours, one for civilian, one for government and one for the military posts we’d reached. It was now their job to stick a pin into every location we contacted, so at a glance we could see the progress of our web.
In one way our talents were uniquely suited to this new-found employment. Our minds, perfectly able to multitask, were empty storage bins waiting to be filled, and of all the hundreds of contacts that came in we remembered every detail, easily. Scout was right as far as her own needs went. She would never have to write anything down, ever, for her recollection. It was all stored in one of her thousands of folders. Our logs were for each other to share and page after page was filled, with the unfolding history of America.
Naomi and Charlie kept exploring new bands and talking to many more classes of people. A picture began to emerge of the state of the union. Charlie was focusing on frequencies used by the military. They had hundreds of radios up and running. His radio could pick up all their bandwidths, but he only talked on the higher ones, closest to the civilian bands. He didn’t want them to know he could listen in to their low, private wavelengths, which most hams couldn’t get. Naomi was on the civil bandwidths talking to fire departments and police trying to reorganize, while Jason stayed with the governor’s office in Sacramento, relaying requests and linking others in for instructions.
