Hiyoki didn’t answer Rodolfo, but pulled the second laptop in front of him and punched keys. “Now it will get interesting.”
Buck went to one of the living room windows and looked outside. The drones twirled and spun in a moving ball, leaving the area but stopping to hover near the boulders, pulsing like a jellyfish. “Something’s getting ready to happen.”
Rodolfo had Chuy and Antonio follow him as they circled the house to reach the pole barn. He pointed at the bulldozer and said to Antonio, “Can you drive it?” The man nodded, and Rodolfo said, “Check for keys.”
Antonio hopped on the dozer and looked for a moment before saying, “No keys in the ignition, or anywhere close.”
“Can you wire it?”
“Take a little time, but yeah.”
“Get busy.”
He said to Chuy, “Look around for keys.”
Rodolfo went to the overhead gas tank and studied it. The tank was translucent white plastic and he could see the liquid inside filling it half-full. Looking around in the barn, he found a pulley system. They could use it to lower the tank to the ground, unhook it from the metal legs holding it up, and have it so the dozer could push it along. The plastic was thick, so it wouldn’t easily puncture, and if it did, it wouldn’t matter much in his plan. He called to Chuy, “Forget the keys, come help me with this.”
Chuy didn’t ask questions and
together they hooked up the pulley system, tipping the stand over so the gas tank was ready to fall and held only by the pulley ropes. They lowered it slowly, and the pulleys made it simple to handle the weight. Once on the ground, Chuy found a screwdriver and took off the metal straps holding the tank to the stand.
Rodolfo pushed the tank, seeing it roll a few inches then resettle, hearing the gas slosh inside. “Good,” he said, “Antonio, how are you coming?”
“I’m ready.”
“Start it up.”
The engine started easy and sounded powerful as it idled. Antonio said, “This may be an old one, but somebody’s taken care of it.”
Rodolfo walked to the dozer, motioning for Chuy to come, and when all three were together, he told them his plan.
Inside the house, Hunter and Buck stood close to each other and talked about what they could do. Buck said, “I’ve got extra weapons in the barn, but…”
Hunter said, “That’s a suicide run. Getting from here to there with all those drones and a bunch of men shooting, you’d maybe make it twenty feet.”
“We need to stay ready and watch those bastards. Maybe we can play into whatever they’re going to try.”
“If we could get out a phone signal, that’d help.”
Both of them peered through the windows, but didn’t see anyone, only the drones hovering in an ever-changing pattern.
They both heard the powerful engine start up, and Buck said, “The bulldozer. They must have hot-wired it.”
Hunter looked at the three boys huddled together in the bedroom. They were quiet, but not panicky. She gave them a thumbs-up and they returned it.
The sound of the dozer grew louder and closer, and then the floor and walls began to vibrate.
Antonio pushed the cylindrical gas tank forward until it wedged against the side of the house, then he backed up and straightened the dozer so the half-raised blade was at the edge of the long front porch. He checked to make sure his men were ready, in case those in the house rushed out to shoot, and then Antonio put the dozer to work.
The increase in the engine’s pitch alerted Hunter and Buck, and it was followed by a shudder that ran through the house as the blade pushed and splintered the front porch so that it collapsed, half on the house wall and half on the ground.
Buck moved to one of the other windows. A quick shot put a spider-webbed hole in it, with the bullet hitting two inches from Buck’s head. He moved to a better place, but still couldn’t see a target.
The dozer backed up and came again, this time collapsing a quarter of the adobe front wall and causing the roof timbers to fall to the floor in a cloud of fine dust.
Hunter moved through the house, checking on the boys first, then going to each room’s windows trying to see the enemy, but no one was visible.
Antonio circled the house and used the blade again on a back corner, breaking loose the adobe bricks and half-leaning the wall to the inside. He backed up quickly and moved forward again, bringing another portion of wall down along with more rafters and dust.