Gunfight at the JD Corral

Thus was born 'The Tournament', which involved a group of six boys and six girls. The boys would be the knights and the girls would be the ladies of the court. The knights who slew the most dragons would get first choice among the ladies. There was a vague assumption that all of the knights would end up picking their own girlfriends. However, there was a certain thrill in not knowing that for sure.

The kids weren't completely irresponsible. They realized that bricking a tractor could be fairly disruptive to a farm. Therefore, they picked March as the best time to minimize the inconvenience. The Tournament would end on midnight, March 31 -- at least ten days before the official planting season for local major crops. That would leave plenty of time to get all of the tractors back in operation.

Mom shook her head. "Seems you kids really bought into the glamor and cool factor of this tournament, but somehow forgot that it was also a federal crime."

"But Aunt..."

"Butt Aunt? Huh, I suppose that makes you Butt Niece?" Chris and I snorted.

Mom gave us a warning look, and said, "Seriously though, it's a crime. Dick Lester did that last year and is now in federal prison. Since you kids started doing this, farmers all over the county are getting really pissed. They called the FBI, who asked Tommy Lee and Chris to come down here and find the culprits."

Lily looked aghast and began crying.

Mom said, "Do you and your friends want to spend the last few months of your high school career and the next few years of your life in jail?"

Lily was sobbing now, and shook her head.

Mom turned to me. "So, what happens next? What are you and Chris going to tell the FBI?"

Crap! Thanks a lot, Mom! I had no idea what to say.

To buy some time, I looked at Lily and pondered for a moment. She seemed to shrivel up in misery under my gaze. I turned back to Mom, who gave me her patented don't-fuck-this-up stare.

I still had nothing. However, years of dealing with difficult clients as a consultant had taught me the value of cloaking a delay in the guise of thoughtful deliberation. "Let me make a few calls tomorrow."

I turned back to Lily and took her hands. "This is a tough problem. I'll do everything I can to clear this all up. In the meantime, I need your promise to keep absolutely quiet about what we've said today. If you talk to your parents or your friends about this, I may not be able to help you. Understand?"

She nodded.

I said, "Promise to not say a word?"

Her voice choked as she said, "I promise," and she began sobbing again.

I pulled her into my arms and held her until she stopped crying. I gave her one last hug and said, "OK, dear heart. Let me go see what I can do about this."

Mom nodded and gave me a satisfied smile that suggested I was doing the right thing, even if I had no idea what that was.

After Lily went home and Mom went to bed, Chris and I sat in the living room sipping a few wee drams of Templeton Rye.

Chris said, "So what now?"

"I'm not completely sure, but I've got a few ideas..."

Chapter 3

The next morning, Chris and I shared our thoughts with Mom. She liked our cunning plan, and added a few refinements.

Next, I called John Kaminsky at his FBI office, and summarized what we had found.

He said, "Nice work." He paused for a moment. "So, what do you propose that we do about it?"

"I have a few ideas..."

He listened for a while and then laughed. "If you can pull that off, I'll not only close the case, but I'll also buy you dinner at the Capitol Grille the next time you're in D.C."

We rang off.

* * *

Chris and I paid a few visits around Coon Rapids. After a few hours of conniving and arm-twisting, we convinced John Henry Holliday -- the local John Deere dealer -- and several farmers to join us in our diabolical scheme.

Mom had Lily drop by our farm after school. She was visibly nervous when she showed up.

I said, "First, the good news. If you do what I say, I think I can get all of the criminal charges dropped, and keep you and your friends out of jail."

Lily almost tackled me with her hug. After many thank-you's and a few more tears, she released me, and we sat down at Mom's dining room table.

I said, "Now, the bad news. There are going to be consequences for your group, and they will be uncomfortable. OK?"

She nodded.

I said, "Good. Now, your tournament ends at midnight on Sunday, March 31, right?"

She nodded again.

"I want you to convince them not to do any more hacks until Sunday night."

"How do I do that?"

"For one thing, dogs. I hear that some of your pals had some close calls with farm dogs during your midnight raids."

"Yes, and one of them got bitten. It was just a nip, but it tore his pants and scared the crap out of him."

"You need to convince them to skip the farms and go for the mother lode at the big John Deere yard at the edge of town. It's a target-rich environment, and there's no dog there."

"Why Sunday night?"

"Because the owner is getting a large shipment of new tractors on Sunday afternoon. Late Sunday night will be the optimal time to strike."

"What are you going to do to my friends?"

"No spoilers. It will be unpleasant, but I promise that no one will be harmed and no one will go to jail. Do you trust me?"

She said, "Yes, I do."

"The minimart across the street closes at ten-thirty, so that whole area will be dark and deserted by eleven. You can squeeze through the gap in the front gate and have an hour to collect as many VIN numbers as possible. Think you can convince your pals to do all this without tipping them off?"

She took a deep breath, and then let it out. "Yes, I can do that."

* * *

Lily called the next day to report success in convincing her pals to hold off until late Sunday night.

On Saturday morning, Chris and I drove to Des Moines and visited several electronics stores. Then we picked up Allison and Roxanne at the airport and drove them back to Coon Rapids. We spent the rest of the day making our preparations at the John Deere yard, and got back to Mom's house well after midnight.

* * *

We slept late on Sunday morning. At dusk, we drove to the John Deere yard via a back road, and hid our car in a field back behind the yard. Mr. Holliday and several farmers were already waiting for us there. We made a few final tweaks to our gear and then settled down in the office building to begin our vigil. An array of strategically placed infrared cameras gave us a great view of most of the yard.

The minimart closed at its usual time, and its outdoor lights turned off about fifteen minutes later. Just after eleven, the IR camera by the front gate showed kids squeezing through its gap, one by one. Once they were all in, they scattered throughout the yard, collecting as many VIN numbers as they could find.

I noticed that Lily was with her boyfriend Jason, and the other kids seemed to be paired up with their significant others. They were all cautious and quiet at first, but became bolder by the minute. After a while, we could hear them all talking and giggling -- even taking occasional selfies with the flash from their phones. While they were busy doing this, one of our adult ninjas crept over and quietly sealed off the gap in the front gate.

This particular yard was about the size of a football field, with several buildings and sheds. The outside area was filled with tractors ranging in size from small garden units up to large row crop tractors. In between the tractors were row after row of accessories, such as tillers, sprayers, seeders, and balers. There were also several large combine harvesters parked about the yard.

A few minutes before midnight, we were ready to spring our trap. I clicked on a remote control, triggering a red flashing light on top of one of the combines near the front gate, as well as a loud robotic voice, which bellowed, "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!"

This galvanized the students. They started running toward the front gate, only to find the friendly gap gone. Some of the boys tried to climb the fence, but dropped back down when they reached the barbed wire at the top.

At my signal, a farmer hidden in the combine by the front gate fired it up, and started rolling it slowly toward the students, with the robotic voice now proclaiming, "INTRUDERS WILL BE HARVESTED! INTRUDERS WILL BE HARVESTED!"

The students reacted just as we had hoped, and went running toward the back of the yard, hoping to find another way out. As they ran, other large machines awoke with a rumble and advanced slowly toward them. We had attached pairs of large, red, round, glowing disks to the larger machines, and they looked like huge, angry eyes. Just to give them an added incentive to run away, we triggered one of the large combine harvesters as they ran past. Even though I was expecting it, the sudden crescendo of clanking, whirring, and chattering metal almost made me pee my pants.

I was touched to see that even in the growing chaos, no teen was left behind. All of the kids looked out for their partners. Several kids stumbled or fell down in the stampede, but their partners always stopped and helped them get back up.

There was a lot of screaming and shouting as the students were driven to the back of the yard. There they found the next phase of our trap: a small labyrinth with six-foot-tall walls of hay bales. It wasn't a big maze, but the kids had to traverse it while being chased by a howling tractor with big red eyes. The maze opened up into a chute of hay bales leading toward the back fence. If this were a military operation, this would have been our 'kill zone'. Of course, that wasn't our goal there -- we just wanted to keep them moving in the right direction. We also wanted to keep them somewhat disoriented. We did this by triggering several sets of bright white and red strobe lights.

The strobes gave the couples enough light to see a ramp of hay bales leading up to the top of the back fence, and they scrambled up the ramp. The flashing lights also kept them from seeing what they were jumping into on the other side of the fence. Two by two, the screaming, panicked students went sliding down a steep, slippery, tarp-covered ramp into a small pond, which we had thoughtfully filled with a mixture of molasses and corn syrup. Their screeches changed abruptly to gloopy splashes, followed by muffled profanity.

As soon as the last student hit the pond, we triggered a set of bright lights, which illuminated a writhing pond of bewildered and sticky teens. I triggered one final deep robotic voice, which roared, "APRIL FOOLS, PUNY HUMANS! YOU HAVE BEEN PWNED!"

* * *

As the squirming mass of teens made their way to the edge of the pond, we helped them out and led them behind ad hoc male and female changing areas made of hay bales. We had considered dumping a load of feathers on them at this point for an eco-friendly version of the classic tar and feathers. However, we decided that clean-up was already going to be enough of a bitch as it was.

The screams started up again when we began to hose the kids off with cold water. Chris and I did the boys, while Allison and Roxanne did the girls. Once they got their sticky clothes off and we sprayed the rest of the gunk off of them, we tossed them towels and sets of dry sweats and flip-flops. Then we led them through an unlocked back gate into a heated building within the yard. Allison checked the kids for injuries, and found nothing more than a few scrapes, bruises, and other minor boo-boos.

Once the kids were warm again, they got a gentle but painful ass-chewing from my mom. The watchword in our family has always been that you will run out of ass before my mom runs out of teeth. However, she doesn't yell and she isn't mean about it. She just radiates this quiet Jedi power that lets you know how profoundly you have disappointed her and the rest of your family.

She concluded with, "Kids, tractor hacking is literally a federal crime. You can thank Lily's cousin TL for convincing the local farmers, Mr. Holliday, and the FBI not to charge all of you with computer fraud.

"It was decent of you to plan this crazy tournament before planting season starts. However, tractors are important to farms all year long, and work delayed is money lost. To make sure you appreciate what life is like without an important piece of infrastructure, you will all be spending the next two months without your cell phones.

The kids responded to this with a mixture of groans and whines, which stopped immediately when Mom gave them her She-With-Whom-Thou-Shalt-Not-Fuck stare.

"You will also personally apologize to each of the farmers you hacked. You will compensate them for their lost time by spending the next two months mucking out barns, stables, and chicken coops on their farms.

"I'm going to end this rant on a positive note. You guys started this silly tournament as a way to have the boys compete for prom dates. However, you forgot all about that when you were in the yard tonight, and stuck with the person you cared for the most. Even during the scariest parts of the last hour, you stayed with that person and picked them up when they fell down. I'm proud of you for doing that. I think you now realize that that's a much better way of choosing a prom date or a life partner than some silly competition."

EPILOG:

All parties agreed that our tractor hackers received appropriate, proportionate, and sufficient punishment for their transgressions, and all was eventually forgiven.

One unexpected, long-term effect was that several of the farmers wanted to keep the red, glowing eyes we had made, and install them on their own tractors. When other farmers saw these eyes, they had to have a set too. John Holliday saw it as a great marketing opportunity, and placed a big order for eyes that he could hand out to other farmers.

Any remaining VIN-locks were disabled and all of the tractors were quickly back in operation.

Chris and I and our wives then spent a pleasant week in Coon Rapids visiting relatives, soaking buns and other body parts in hot tubs, sipping adult beverages, and catching up on each other's adventures.

During the wilderness medical conference, the girls had taken an urban survival course. They delighted in telling us about some of the esoteric (treatment of platypus envenomation) and practical (starting a fire using a flashlight battery) things they had learned during the week.

They were fairly complimentary about how we had set up the showdown at the John Deere yard. Allison said, "You two are really proud of yourselves, aren't you?"

Chris and I posed with our biceps flexed, our chests puffed out and our chins raised high. Chris said, "Yes, we are proud. We are mighty. WE ARE NERDS!"

Roxanne rolled her eyes, and said, "Yes, but you guys do realize that you could have dealt with this in just a few minutes by ratting the kids out to their parents, and then letting their moms and dads take care of all the punishment. Right?"

Chris and I tried to think of a flaw in her logic. It was hard. It had never occurred to us to try something so simple. We stuck out our lower lips and pouted.

Roxanne finally took pity on us. "You guys are SO easy to tease. Sure, the parents could have punished their own kids, but the consequences would have pretty much ended right there. But what you guys did was LEGENDARY! Infrastructure hacking is a HUGE problem that nobody seems to talk about.

"Your epic takedown is already going viral. I'll bet that every kid and every farmer in Iowa will hear about this by the end of the week. Maybe even a few legislators. Your stunt could even be the two-by-four across the mule's head that finally gets lawmakers' attention long enough to fund programs that prevent this sort of hacking."

She kissed Chris on his cheek. "Besides, sweetie, your way was a LOT more fun."

* * *

Later in bed, I mentioned to Allison that we still had a lot of syrup left over from our caper, and offered to lick small quantities of it off her body. She passed on the syrup, but let me know that a bit of plowing and fertilizing would be greatly appreciated.

Ahhhhh... A farmer's work is never done.

The End