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“I have. Listening to all of the EMP and survival experts on the radio yesterday helped. We’ll go right after dusk when most of the neighbors are inside and before the bad dudes, if any, hit the streets at midnight—the witching hour.”
    “Let’s go inside, Daddy, and get out of the sun,” said Alex, apparently concerned about her father sweltering under the hot sun.
    Colton nodded and led them around to the side gate, which entered into the pool area. “One more thing before we go inside. The rear is our most vulnerable part of the property. If I were a burglar, this would be an ideal point of entry.”
    The Rymans’ backyard consisted of the pool house and the pool contained within a short retaining wall structure. A six-foot-tall wooden privacy fence blocked out the surrounding neighbors and connected the house to the other structures. Heading north up an embankment away from the Ryman home was a wooded, heavily landscaped area that would provide any intruder perfect cover as they approached the back of the house. In the dark of the night, a looter could be right on top of them easily without being detected.
    Alex recalled a similar situation. “Mom, do you remember last year when some of the neighborhood boys snuck up on me when I was lying out in the sun? They scared me to death.”
    “Yeah, I remember,” replied Madison. “I also remember them running for their lives when you started pelting them with pea gravel.”
    “I was listening to my iPod, which allowed them to sneak up on me.”
    Colton interrupted. “Exactly, Alex. You couldn’t hear them coming. We can remedy that. You notice how quiet it is now, right?”
    Both of the Ryman women nodded their heads. Colton walked over to the garbage cans and pulled out an empty Red Bull can. He poured some pea gravel in it and gave it a shake.
    Rattle, rattle, rattle .
    “We’ll take some of the fishing line from the gear you found and string it through the pop tops of these Red Bull cans. We’ll wind it through the trees to create a trip alarm. I also have some other barriers and booby traps in mind.”
    Madison took the can from Colton and shook it. “Won’t that use up a lot of fishing line?”
    “It can. My thought is to create an easy path down the hill for the bad guys.”
    “What?” asked Alex. “I thought the idea is to make it harder for them to come down the hill.”
    Colton hopped up on the wall and walked up into the trees about twenty yards. “They have this entire stretch to make their way to the house. I don’t think we can block it all, nor can we set trip alarms this far apart.” He started spreading the mulch with his feet between two oak trees.
    “You look like the guy on HGTV, Daddy,” said Alex.
    Colton nodded and continued. “We’ll create a path that encourages them to enter this six-foot-wide entry point. We’ll set up our trip alarms a few yards above this, which will give us time to react. If they come at us in a group, they’ll get congested here in a bunch, and we can shoot them all at once. The landscaping and the slope creates a natural spot for them to clump together.”
    “We’ll have to act fast,” said Madison. “But knowing this is the most logical part of the yard a burglar would use allows us to focus on it.”
    “Plus, Alex’s bedroom window is right there,” said Colton, pointing above their heads. “She’ll hear them coming through the woods before they reach the makeshift alarms.”
    “If I had a gun up there, I could shoot them as they tried to get away,” said Alex.
    Colton knew they were woefully short of weapons to defend their home. He thought of ways to obtain more guns. Making deals was what came to mind first, but it seemed foolish to trade food, the most valued commodity at the moment. An opportunity would present itself. He was sure of it.
     

Chapter 7
    DAY ONE
    6:00 p.m. MT, September 9
    NORAD
    Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
     
    There were four aircraft available to the President