Sinclair Feldman's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

With the vault sealed and Logan's repair parts still on order, Sinclair turned to a slower problem. The raiders knew their radio line was cracked. They would regroup and come back for the vault. Sinclair meant to know where they gathered before they moved. He spread his survey board on a crate in the garage warehouse and pulled up the marked map beside it. Donovan leaned over the transceiver, headphones half on, chasing raider chatter across the band. He had built the deception channel that already sent two raider trucks to a false salvage site. "Oh man, they're loud today," he said. He turned a knob and the display bloomed with signal. "Somebody's setting up shop north. Real construction talk. Fuel, wire, a headcount." Sinclair studied the hand-drawn route map. Two small outposts and one larger camp sat twenty miles north of the vault. He tapped the ruin sketched at the top. "A pre-war police station," he said. "Hard walls, one road in. If they finish digging in there, we can't push them out." Private Russel stepped in from the door, white tabby in green fatigues, a field pouch on her belt. She set a folded scrap on the crate without waiting to be asked. "Sir. Second group moving south of us. Not the same band. Different colors, different trucks." She pointed at the river line on the map, at the outpost five miles down. "They're independent. They don't answer the northern camp." Brad pulled off his glasses and cleaned them, thinking. "Two raider crews who hate each other, both close." He nodded slow. "Between you and me, that's a gift. You don't have to fight either one if they fight each other." Sinclair saw it whole. He didn't need to send men north into hard walls. He needed the two crews pointed at one another. He looked at Donovan. "You still have their command frequency." "You bet." Donovan's tone went flat and dry. "They know the line's dirty, but they still listen. Fear does that." "Then feed the southern crew a raid," Sinclair said. "Tell them the police station holds a supply cache. Make it worth the drive." Donovan keyed the handheld mic. He shaped his voice into raider slang, naming the ruin, naming crates of fuel and ammo. Russel confirmed the southern trucks answering. Brad tracked them on the survey board, dots crawling north toward the marked station. Before dawn, gunfire crackled twenty miles off. Donovan pulled his headphones down. "They hit the station," he said. "Northern crew's screaming about a raid. They think it's a rival power grab." He almost smiled. "They're too busy killing each other to think about us." Sinclair rolled up the map. The vault stayed his. But the deception line had spent its trust. The raiders would now hunt the voice that turned them. He had bought time for the tech, and marked his team as the ghost in their radio.