Donovan O'Niel's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Morning after the hires, Donovan walked the wire with a fresh problem. Four guards covered the fence, but no one carried a voice past the yard. If the hatch went bad, no one outside would know until the shooting stopped. He needed a regional line before he went under the slab. He set two goals for the day: raise Logan at Reilly's Rangers on a clean channel, and put the junkyard staff on a walking patrol for anyone drifting close to the pillar. He crossed to the equipment shop and opened the red file organizer on the bench. The worn blue and yellow manual lay on top, Zelda's pharmaceutical notes marking the pages he cared about. He pulled the frequency sheet from the back sleeve and clipped it to his map case. Ranger bunker channels were burned. He needed a shortwave path Red Hills had never touched. Marcus met him at the shop door. Donovan laid it out plain. "I need the tallest antenna in range. The old broadcast tower west of here. If I bounce off their dish, I can raise Logan without touching a Ranger channel." Marcus nodded once. "Take Breem. He knows the tower. Take Ramos too. Ramos climbs anything with bolts." The red brick radio building sat two hours out, dish still bolted to the roof. Robert Breem drove. Ramos Perez rode shotgun in his blue jumpsuit, glasses pushed up his nose, a coil of shielded cable across his knees. Inside, the studio smelled like dust and old solder. Ramos climbed the roof ladder and ran Donovan's line down to the console. Breem held the ground clip steady while Donovan matched impedance by ear. Donovan keyed the mic and called Logan on the agreed shortwave frequency. Static, then a clean voice. "Reilly's Rangers, Logan speaking." Donovan gave his call sign and the code phrase from the manual's back cover. Logan answered with the counter phrase. The line held. Donovan sent his position, the hatch schedule, and a request for a listening watch every four hours until he surfaced with the package. Logan agreed and gave him a fallback frequency. Back at the yard by dusk, Donovan pulled Marcus and Achilles to the coffee hut. "Your staff walks the fence in pairs. Every hour. Anyone within fifty feet of the concrete pillar gets challenged. No exceptions, no strangers past the second gate." Marcus wrote the rotation on the ledger and signed his men to it. Achilles took the first shift himself. By full dark, Donovan had a regional line to Logan, a patrol grid inside the wire, and a wrist monitor charging on the bench for the descent. Then Ramos jogged up from the back lot, breath short. "Two of the yard boys just challenged a scavenger at the pillar. He ran. Dropped this." He held out a folded paper. A hand-drawn map of the junkyard, with the pillar circled in red ink. Someone outside already knew where the hatch was.