Winter Kill - War With China Has Already Begun

by Gene Skellig

  “I only have a few dozen rounds for the Armalite, but this

  Accuracy International AWSM uses 0.300 Winchester Magnum, so ammunition is no problem.”

  “Where did you get it?” Casey asked, as he raised this rifle to his shoulder, surprised by its light weight.

  “Its called the ‘Arctic Warfare Super-Magnum’. The British and other NATO Special Forces found great success with the it in Afghanistan’s snowy mountains. It weighs just over six kilos.” Pal explained as he put the AWSM carefully back into its case.

  The third rifle he took out was very familiar to Casey from his service in the Canadian Forces. The Diemaco C7 was widely known as the M16 assault rifle, with 5.56 mm caliber rounds in 20 and 30 round blued-steel magazines. Pal told Casey that even though this was a Restricted Fire-Arm he had special permission to own one due to his participation in the National Service Rifle Target Shooting Association of Canada, and was grandfathered under a sporting exception. What the RCMP did not know, Pal informed Casey, was that while he had registered his C7 and complied with all storage, transport and inspection requirements under Canada’s strict gun-control laws, he actually had two such weapons. This un-registered one he stored at home along with the sniper rifles. The other one was kept at the gun club, available for RCMP inspection at any time. Constable Walker and other cops had checked him out a few times, and never found anything out of order.

  The visit to Pal’s house had started a close personal bond between Pal and Casey. It also marked the end of his collecting activities at the Gun Club. He had learned what he needed about the members and had found a better way to continue his stockpiling activities. After that date, Casey would visit the Gun Club only once every month or two, but still participated in some of the social activities.

  With the discrete assistance of the Gun Club owner Casey was able to buy ammunition off-the-books with cash. Pal recorded the ammo as expended in Gun Club shooting activities. It was less risky for Casey, and completely illegal.

  Pal also helped Casey acquire two AWSM sniper rifles with laser range-finding sights, an M-16 with a day-night scope, and two 9mm SIG Sauer pistols identical to the one Casey owned legally. The deal was always for cash. This suited Casey, who insisted on using a dead-drop at a remote spot on a disused logging road so that there would be no in-person exchanges of the goods. When Casey went to the dead drop to collect the first of the weapons and leave the plastic bag containing the cash, Casey half-expected to be confronted with bright lights, sirens, and the RCMP. But it had not been a set-up, and the secret exchange was repeated several times after that.

  Casey ordered other accessories through Pal, including a silencer for one of the AWSMs and two for the pistols, along with 24,000 rounds in various calibers. Casey would never come to know how Pal actually acquired the goods, but he did know that Pal drove down and took the Victoria Clipper to Seattle to visit his elderly mother at least once a month. Until the HOTH was completed, Casey hid the ammunition and the illicit weapons in carefully prepared plastic containers which he buried in remote locations in the Crown Land forest behind the HOTH property. Casey didn’t want to bring any of the ammunition and weapons acquired from Pal onto the property until the time came when their overt use was necessary.

  Back on the property, Marc was enjoying his work so much that he was actually a bit sad when, after two full weeks on the job-site, it was time to once again to lay out the bed of scarred-up old tires and walk his big machine back onto the low-bed for the move to the next job-site.

  The forested HOTH property had been transformed, and a lot of less visible work had been completed. Casey and Marc had installed three separate 100 meter circuits of the distinctive green two-inch polyethylene piping for the closed-loop ground source heat pump, GSHP, system. The first two loops were for two separate four-tonne geothermal units. The units would be installed in such a way that Casey could adjust the fittings and valves to connect each of the units to heat one or both of the two boilers associated with the hydronic heating system.

  Two GSHP units were capable of providing a total of 160,000 BTU’s of heating for the HOTH. The third circuit was for a single four-tonne GSHP unit to provide 80,000 BTUs to heat the concrete floor of the barn / greenhouse complex, and the recreation area in the south-facing sub-level below the greenhouse. Another GSHP unit had been retained in its original packing as a spare, along with a box of critical components which could fail within ten years. Casey stored these along with a small pump-and-bucket rig he put together for the annual task of flushing the GSHP units with diluted muriatic acid to clean out any scaling or debris that accumulated.

  One of the most fun days for Casey and Marc had been when they installed the two septic tanks. Both were two-piece clamshell-type concrete septic tanks. Each tank had its own distribution field, comprised of a few hundred feet of perforated four-inch white PVC piping laid in one-foot deep beds of drain rock. Normally, of course, there would only be one such tank, however Casey had designed the waste-water plumbing of the HOTH to have both solid waste system and grey water systems. This would allow all of the chemical-containing waste water to flow through one tank, while the other tank would receive the solid waste from the toilets only. The bacteria in the second tank could then break down the solids much more effectively, promoting a healthy, long-lived, sewage system. For Casey, doing such “hands on” work really gave him a lot of satisfaction, and he and Mark had a few laughs in the process.

  In his Factors and Deductions Analysis during the planning of the HOTH, and using the “What if?” process, Casey uncovered the operational risk that it would become impossible to get a honey-truck to do the normal five-year clean-out of the septic tank. The “So what?” of it was that septic tanks would eventually become clogged and unusable.

  It was essential to design a robust system which could last for decades with essentially no maintenance other than to pour some beer or yogurt into the toilets to promote bacteria in the solid waste septic tank.

  Casey also installed connections between the each of tanks and between the D-boxes of the distribution fields, a few inches above the normal high water levels. That way, if one system became plugged the second one would take over automatically.

  One thing that Marc had found strange was the massive quantity of overburden material that Casey had him lay on top of the distribution field. It made sense to him that the GSHP lines were installed under the distribution field, so that the heating system could recover some heat from the waste water in addition to the prevailing twelve degrees C of the surrounding ground at that depth. But to put two yards of clay on top of the distro field seemed excessive.

  When Casey had been less than eager to answer his questions about it, Marc had stopped asking. But when he saw how Casey had taken care to install six inches of insulated Styrofoam sheeting around the two clamshell septic tanks and around the sewer piping from the foundation excavation to the tanks and D-Boxes, Marc realized that the system was designed to function in extreme cold, perhaps down to minus 40 C!

  By the end of the job, when Casey had Marc perform some unusual tasks with the excavator, Marc had stopped asking Boss Callaghan too many questions. He simply shaped the trenches, berms, and gullies according to the directions Casey gave him.

  Marc could guess that at least a few of them were intended to have some wires or pipes installed because Casey had Marc pile the excess material alongside the trenches for later filling them back in with. Perhaps they were for decorative lights, sprinkler systems and that sort of thing, Marc had thought.

  Marc did not consider that they could also be for security cameras, intercom, and power supply for a range of outbuildings and other aspects of an integrated security system.

  9

  WOOD PATROL

  22 July: 14 Months After NEW

  After reading the LED display mounted on the wall opposite the main floor office space, Jason Jessup knew that today would be a perfect day for a Wood Patrol. The anemometer pr
oviding data to the electronic weather station was actually mounted on a pole on top of the HOTH. It provided wind speed, direction, relative humidity and barometric pressure. Zlata posted her twelve-hour forecast and the long-term trend on the bulletin board, right next to Old Mr. Skinner’s radiation charts.

  By now there were no more changes in radiation. All the gamma radiation had burned itself out and HOTH had not received any of the heavy radiation that had made the area within 20 kilometers down-wind of Comox uninhabitable for decades. Thankfully, the plutonium, strontium and other heavy particles from the blasts at Canadian Forces Base Comox were either carried down the Strait of Georgia, just missing Oceanside,or had been deposited close to the base.

  The smaller particles which spread more extensively, blanketing the Oceanside community, predominantly carried radioactive isotopes of iodine and other short-lived hazards. Even so, the radiation levels had been intense for the first two weeks after the blasts, ultimately fatal to those exposed for any length of time.

  Even though he knew that radiation levels had long since fallen to relatively safe levels, JJ still kept a close eye on them.

  He also reviewed the Outside Read File, “ORF”, for any advisories or maintenance tasks that needed to be taken care of by anybody going outside on a task or mission. It was also a handy way to inform others, who may be on opposite sleeping cycles, about recent activity or other security related issues.

  The weather data was added to Zlata’s climate database during the overnight shift, as one of the many administrative tasks that the adults of the HOTH took care of during their duties. But JJ did not need to see Zlata’s weekly power-point presentation to understand what the high pressure, warm temperature and light south-westerly winds meant.

  From the gradual increase in the rate that the barometer was falling, the counter-clockwise trend in wind direction, and the gradual increase in the relative humidity JJ knew that there was a cold front approaching Vancouver Island from the west.

  This would bring yet another dump of snow within a day or so, he figured. But it also meant that he would have one good day with the balmy plus two C temperature that they had been enjoying for the last few days. There was no chance that this would melt much of the eight feet of accumulated snow, but the above zero temperatures had cleared the trees of snow and made a good hard surface crust that made travel easier.

  The sky would be as gloomy as always, with the dust shroud showing no signs of abating. But even that dim light would feel glorious in comparison to the endless hours of artificial light in the HOTH. JJ loved to work outside, and looked forward to every rotation into firewood patrol duty. Being experienced with skidoos, chain saws and fire-arms, JJ was one of the designated leaders for this type of task. On this patrol he would have five other adults and four teenage boys along to help him.

  “Boys – Jack! Adam! Rory! Let’s get-a-move-on!” he shouted downstairs to the rec room.

  “It’s not my turn, it’s Decklan’s turn!” replied Rory.

  “I’m in the Garage, JJ!” shouted Rory’s brother. The eldest son of Francis Callaghan, Decklan behaved like an adult, well in advance of his eighteen years.

  When JJ stuck his head into the garage, he saw that Decklan had prepared the skidoos. Without being told to, Decklan had moved the stealthier skidoo to the front of the garage, and had the larger gas-powered skidoo with its train of two tub-like cargo sleds lined up to the right side of the other, “Whisper” sled. The garage door itself had been closed for months, and a lumber wall had been erected to reinforce it against the snow-load from the ever-increasing accumulation of snow outside. But the four-foot wide roll-up door adjacent to the main garage door was always kept clear for the skidoos.

  By the left side of the garage, Decklan had laid out eight sets of lightweight, mini snowshoes for the Team. In front of the rollup door he had laid out the man-portable plastic sled with two chain saws, two Swede saws, two axes, an adze, a splitting wedge and a couple of small rucksacks containing the fist aid kit, water, lunches and hand-held radios that JJ and the Vogel boys had prepared the night before. Everything other than the fire-arms, which JJ had with him, had been organized exactly as per Standard Operating Procedures, SOPs.

  As he zipped up his own one-piece parka, JJ saw that the other adults were entering the garage.

  “Amy, you can’t be serious!” he said when he saw that Amy was carrying a large black box.

  “Hey, it’s not me! Zlata wants me to set this up by the South-West Rally Point to give it a good shake-out. She thinks she’s solved the power supply problem and wants it set out for a two-week test. I think it’s a waste of time, unless we convert back to NiCad batteries, but Zlata’s adamant that these old lead-acid types can do the job.” Amy explained this as she placed the rugged metal box onto a man-portable sled.

  Zlata had been working on a remote camera that could be left for two or three weeks without any requirement for maintenance, and had a theoretical transmission range of two km. It transmitted digital imagery using a modified Wireless Internet set-up that had been adjusted for improved range and could be picked up by the base station on the roof of the HOTH. With this, security teams could set up an automated Observation Post, “Auto-OP”, at emerging sites of interest. It would be very useful when conducting surveillance of a raider’s base, or watching a travel route. A remote camera would reduce manpower requirements and improve security, and provide HOTH Ops with a live feed when taking out bad guys “off campus”.

  Today it would mean that the team would have one additional heavy sled to pull on the long, uphill hike. JJ was sure that Amy could handle it, and he accepted the need to support other projects - especially security related ones.

  Everybody in the HOTH took security very seriously. It was the most important task, particularly with the number of attacks they had fought off in the last year. The first few months had been dicey, with groups of five to ten desperate men trying to storm the HOTH. In those first few months, with the roads still wide open and the HOTH not as well populated as it was now, more than a few battles had nearly gone the wrong way.

  As it was, the five truck drivers assigned to live in and operate the Gate House, fighting to protect their loved ones up in the HOTH, had born the brunt of these first attacks.

  Casey’s strategy of keeping a sizable armed force at the Gate House, using the cameras and associated security features installed by Marc, had outwitted each attacking group and kept the skirmishes to the front portion of the HOTH property. This allowed re-enforcements from the HOTH to move down to flanking positions at the North and North-East OPs, firing directly into the two ambush sites that attackers were repeatedly lured into by the clever landscaping features.

  The truck drivers were the only members of the HOTH group who had not come from Casey’s extended family, established friends, or existing contacts within the community. These other people had gradually trickled in over the last year, but it had been in the first hours after the war started, when Casey had made his transmission on the Citizen’s Band radio, that the truckers had been recruited.

  JJ recalled how fast things happened after the Air Force base in Comox was nuked. His plan to drive his semi-trailer load of canned goods to the Superstore in Port Hardy had gone out the window when he rounded the corner at Fanny Bay and saw two mushroom clouds looming over Comox, twenty km ahead. He had immediately pulled his rig over, and hunkered down with his wife, Gwen, awaiting the blast wave. After they figured out that no blast wave was coming, as it had already blown itself out, they heard Casey’s unusual broadcast on the Citizen's Band, CB radio:

  “Breaker - Breaker, to all truckers between Courtenay and Nanoose on Highway 19. This is The Boss. A nuclear war has started. You are cut off by blasts at Nanoose and Nanaimo down-island, and Comox up-island. Radiation is on its way down from Comox. The blast occurred ten minutes ago at 10:20 local time. The fallout is being blown down-island at 15 km per hour. It will give you a fatal dose of ra
diation if you are not in a safe location. A safe location means the equivalent of two feet of concrete between yourself and the outside, with filtered air. If you can’t find a safe location, your best bet is to take Highway 4 towards Port Alberni, and get out of the winds coming from Comox. You will have to stay away from the fallout zone for up to two weeks, during which time your load will likely be confiscated by community officials or armed gangs. If, however, you are looking for an alternative which will allow you a degree of choice in the matter, then pull over just before the Highway 4 exit from Highway 19. A blue-haired girl will pay you a visit within fifteen minutes, giving you some valuable information. Good luck. Boss out.”

  JJ and Gwen immediately turned their rig around at the Fanny Bay exit and accelerated down-island to the Highway 4 exit. When they reached it, they figured they had over three hours before the radiation arrived, so they decided to watch for the blue-haired girl and see what this “Boss” had to offer.

  The blue-haired girl turned out to be Casey’s oldest daughter, Hope, wearing a clown’s wig to stand out. She was accompanied by Danny and Yuri. The openly armed men made JJ a bit uncomfortable, even though he and Gwen, like so many trucking pairs these days, were also armed. Once Hope explained the offer, and showed JJ some pictures of the fallout shelter in the basement of the HOTH, JJ and Gwen tentatively agreed.

  It all seemed surreal to JJ, surrendering his truckload of over 40,000 pounds of canned goods to a man he had never met before, in exchange for a 1% stake in a collection of assets he had no opportunity to evaluate. But when JJ realized that the young girl was only making the offer to those truckers who were hauling valuable supplies of food, materials or fuel, and that she was only giving each trucker a few minutes to ponder the offer, he decided to go with his instinct and followed the pilot car driven by another of Casey’s group, leading JJ to the HOTH.