Patriots

by James Wesley, Rawles

  In a booming, no-nonsense voice, Todd warned, “There are four rifles trained on you. Just lay your rifle down, very slowly.” After a pause to look around him and confirm the number of ambushers, the stranger did as he was told. “Take three steps backward. Put your hands on top of your head. Now, drop to your knees and cross your legs.”Again, the stranger obeyed.

  Todd motioned forward in a jabbing motion of his index finger to Dan Fong. From his spot at the far end of the kill zone, Dan set down his HK and rose to his feet. He quietly padded around their unexpected visitor, positioning himself on the far side of the kill zone. He then drew his .45, leveled it at the man, clicked off its safety, and said, “Okaaay, I want you to very slowly unstrap your belly band and then toss your backpack toward my friends over there.”

  With a grunt, the stranger tossed the pack toward Mary. It landed only a few feet in front of her. “Okaaay. Now the same for your web gear.”With that the stranger unsnapped his belt and pulled off his LC-1 harness. It fell next to the Kelty pack. Dan thumbed up the safety of his Colt, reholstered it, and approached the intruder. He frisked him thoroughly. In the pockets of his M65 BDU field jacket he found a pair of D3A gloves and wool liners. In his shirt and pants pockets, he found a German army pocketknife, and a U.S. Army issue lensatic compass with tritium markings. Wrapped in Ziploc bags were AAA Idaho/Montana and Western States and Provinces road maps. In other pockets, he found a foil wrapped maple nut cake from an MRE, and a camouflage face paint stick. He also discovered a custom T.H. Rinaldi Sharkstooth fighting knife strapped to his left calf, under his BDU trousers. Dan commented, “Wow, a Rinaldi!You’ve got nice taste in knives… Always good to have a little backup.”

  After gently tossing the Kydex-sheathed knife and the contents of the stranger’s pockets into a pile near the pack, Dan declared, “He’s clean now, Boss.” Dan walked back to his position, snapped his Bianchi holster’s retention strap closed, flopped down prone, and reshouldered his rifle.

  As soon as Dan was back in position, Todd stood up. Holding his HK91 at waist level, pointing at the stranger, he proclaimed, “We’re not bandits. We are sovereign Idaho citizens. I own the land you are standing on, free and clear. We just want to ask you some questions, and then you can go.” Todd lowered the muzzle of his rifle, and then continued, “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Doug Carlton.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “West.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Missoula. I went there to see if my parents were still alive. They weren’t. Half the town was burned out, including my parents’ place. I buried them in the backyard, and moved on. Not many people left there.”

  “And where before Missoula?”

  “Pueblo, Colorado. I’m, or was rather, a senior at the University of Southern Colorado. I was studying mechanical engineering.”

  Todd clicked the push-to-talk button on his TRC-500. He spoke into the black foam-padded microphone, “Any signs of anyone else, Rose?”

  From the LP/OP, Rose replied, “Nope, looks like he’s a solo rather than somebody’s point man.”

  Todd replied, “Thanks. Just keep your eyes open, out.”

  After adjusting the thin wire antenna of the TRC-500, Todd resumed his questioning. “You look pretty military, Doug. Are you a National Guardsman or reservist?”

  “Neither. I’m an Army ROTC cadet—an MS 4—that’s a fourth-year cadet. I went to ROTC Advanced Camp last summer and Basic Camp at Fort Knox the summer before that.”

  “If you’re really a cadet, then you’ll know a few things… such as:What does

  ‘PMS’ stand for, in the context of a ROTC department?”

  “Professor of Military Science. Usually a Colonel, sometimes a Lieutenant Colonel.”

  Todd nodded affirmatively, then asked, “What are the four Army staff functions?”

  Carlton quickly recited, “At brigade level and lower, the S-1 shop is for personnel. S-2 is intelligence. S-3 is for training in peacetime, and operations in wartime. S-4 is logistics. The functions are the same at higher echelons, except they have G prefixes: G-1, G-2, G-3, and G4.”

  “Correct. What is the maximum effective range of an excuse?”

  Carlton snapped back: “Zero meters!”

  Todd nodded again and grinned. “You’re a kay-dette all right. Sit down Indian-style there, and let’s talk.” Carlton sat down as ordered. Todd also sat cross-legged, fifteen feet away, the HK91 now resting crossways on his knees.

  He looked the stranger in the eye, and asked, “Now where exactly were you headed?”

  In a more relaxed voice, Carlton replied, “Just west into the Palouse country. Nowhere in particular. I thought I’d try to find some little town that wasn’t wiped out, and hire on as a security man. You know, sort of a Yojimbo.”

  Todd cocked his head. “I’m not sure how many towns are still intact, Doug.

  Besides, you’d be lucky if you were able to approach one without being shot on sight. From what I’ve heard on the CB and the shortwave, there are itchy trigger fingers all over America.” Todd paused and asked, “Why weren’t you down on the county road?”

  “Roads are for people who like to get ambushed! If you’ve got to travel, you live longer traveling cross-country. I’ve learned that it’s best not to follow trails that look like they’ve been used by anything but deer.”

  Todd vigorously nodded his head in agreement. He eyed the heap of Carlton’s gear on the ground. Looking back toward Doug, he pronounced, “To save us some time, give us a complete rundown on the contents of your pack, your clothing, and web gear. Be honest. We’ll check for ourselves later.”

  Doug Carlton began a matter-of-fact inventory. “In the web gear I’ve got six spare magazines for the M1A: one loaded with match, one with hundred-and-fifty-grain soft nose, and the rest with ball. A Gerber multi-plier tool. Two canteens. On the outside of the pack is clipped a parachutists’ first aid kit.

  Inside the pack I’ve got a cleaning kit and a few spare parts for the M1A. A Wiggy’s sleeping bag. A poncho. Several sets of socks and underwear. An extra set of BDUs. What’s left of a tube tent. Five MREs. Four cans of chili and beans. A bag of venison jerky. Some miner’s lettuce. A half dozen smoked trout.

  A small fishing kit. Some snares. A gill net. A toothbrush. A hank of olive drab 550 parachute cord. A little Tupperware container of salt. Some Ziploc bags and three plastic trash bags. Signal mirror. One of those Navy signal strobe lights with a spare battery. A small sewing kit. A little over twelve dollars face value in pre-1965 silver dimes and quarters. A Case skinning knife and small sharpening stone.”

  He hesitated briefly, and then went on, “Let’s see, what else? Some pieces of tanned deer hide. A pocket address book. Three bandoleers of seven-sixty-two ball. Forty-seven rounds of .308 soft-points. Some granola bars. A bar of soap. A couple of camo sticks. A cable saw. Matches in a waterproof container. About seven or eight packs of damp-proof matches out of MREs. A ‘Metal Match’ fire starter. About ten trioxane ration heating bars. In the bottom of the pack I’ve got a Survival Arms AR-7 .22 rifle, stowed in its stock. Three spare magazines, and 462 rounds of .22 long rifle—a mixture of soft nose and hollow points. I may have forgotten a few odds and ends, but that’s about it.”

  “No handgun?” Todd asked.

  “Negative. That was going to be my next purchase, but then the economy went ballistic.”

  “Sounds like you had the survival bent well before the Crunch hit, Doug.”

  “Yeah, I’m a ‘prepper.’”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Are you a member of a survival group?”

  “No. Last spring semester some of the cadets in our ROTC department and I talked about forming a group, but nothing ever came of it. So you have a group retreat here?”

  With a frown, Todd rebuked, “For now, let me ask the questions, Cadet Carlton. If we decide it’s appropriate, you
might get some of your questions answered later. It sounds as if you have some information on what is going on outside our immediate vicinity that would be of interest to us. I also need to discuss some things with my friends. Now… what I want you to do is to get up and walk slowly toward the house. You are now our guest. Once again, you don’t have to fear for your life or property. You can collect your gear later and go in peace. We’ll just leave it exactly where it is for the time being.”

  They slowly walked to the house, with Carlton leading the way, five paces ahead. When they got to the house, Todd asked Mary to wait outside and watch Carlton. She stood twenty-five feet away, with the muzzle of her CAR-15 pointed toward him. Gesturing to the gun, Carlton said, “That really isn’t necessary, ma’am.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Mary replied, with her exhaled breath making a miniature cloud of fog.

  After twenty-five chilly minutes, Todd poked his head out of the door.

  “You can come inside now.”

  Doug Carlton sat in an easy chair at the end of the living room near the stove, warming his hands and sipping a cup of instant coffee. After waiting a few minutes, Todd inquired, “Very well then, Doug, let’s hear your life’s story, beginning with ‘I was born…’.”

  “My full name is Douglas John Carlton. My father was a telephone line-man and later a phone company office manager. Before that, he did two tours inVietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He got out as an E-6. My mother was a legal secretary.

  They wrote letters back and forth the whole time he was overseas. I guess you could say that they fell in love via correspondence. They got married just a month after he ETSed, and I was born exactly one year from the day that they were married. Every year we celebrated my birthday and their anniversary together. I was an only child. Something about a complication from when I was born prevented my mom from ever having any more kids….”

  Carlton sighed and went on. “I was born and raised in Missoula. I had a pretty typical childhood, at least by Montana standards. My dad liked hunting and fishing, so I got to do a lot of both. I’ve always been mechanically inclined.

  I guess I took my Erector Set and Legos too seriously as a boy.

  “When I was five or six years old I was building little forts in the backyard. By the time I was ten, I had free rein at the junkyard that was a quarter-mile away from our house. The old guy who ran the place humored me by selling me scrap box-bar stock, sprockets, pulleys, and wheels and whatnot for nickels and dimes. I built pushcarts at first, and later chain drive pedal carts. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I built my first motorized go-cart. It was powered by a five-horse Briggs and Stratton engine. It’s a wonder that I didn’t get myself killed, driving those go-carts around.

  “It was only natural that I wanted to study engineering. I started out at the junior college in Missoula. I tried getting into the engineering program at the University of Montana there in Missoula, but it was ‘impacted.’ So I started applying all over the place for scholarships. I got a two-year scholarship from the University of Southern Colorado. That was more than enough to make up for the higher cost of out-of-state tuition. I only paid the out-of-state fees for the first two years. After that, I had my Colorado residency, so I paid the lower resident tuition.

  “The University of Southern Colorado is in Pueblo. Everyone calls it USC, which of course leads to some confusion. When I told my friends in Montana that I was enrolled at USC, they immediately thought that I was talking about the University of Southern California. Personally, I thought that our USC was the better school. I really liked the people there. On campus everybody got along, whether you were Mexican, Indian,Anglo, or anything in between. The engineering program there at USC was excellent. We called it the University of Solid Concrete, because of all the concrete architecture.

  “Pueblo is essentially a blue-collar town. So the campus and town are two different worlds. Off campus, there were already some interracial problems, so I knew it wouldn’t be a good town to stick around in, during an upheaval.

  “Two years ago, one of the guys in my dorm asked me if I wanted to go with him to Army ROTC Basic Camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Since I had grown up hearing my dad’s stories about his Army days, I was naturally interested. My dad had talked about shooting M60 machineguns and Browning .50s, and here was my chance to get trained on all that stuff, with no ROTC contract obligation. I thought ‘wow, I’m going to get paid to go shoot up Uncle Sam’s ammo and get tactical training?’ I went to go talk to the PMS, Colonel Galt, and he signed me up. It didn’t pay much for the six-week camp, but they let us keep the two pairs of combat boots that they issued us. The weather was really hot and humid, but other than that, I had a blast and I learned a lot. When I got back, I signed up for a Guaranteed Reserve Forces Duty contract with ROTC. That pays four hundred dollars a month for an MS-4. Last summer I went to Advanced Camp. That’s another six-week camp that cadets usually take between their junior and senior years.

  “I liked the idea of the GRFD contract, because I knew that I wanted to work in civilian industry, rather than spending four years in the active Army. My only active duty commitment was a five-month officer’s basic course, and then six years in the Army Reserve, with two weeks of active duty training each year. I had applied for branch assignment to the Ordnance Corps with the Engineers as my second choice. But then everything collapsed and I had to bug out before my branch assignment ever came down from the Army Personnel Headquarters.

  “When the dollar took its swan dive, things in the dorms at USC got strange. More than half of the dormies had bugged out by the time I left. Some of them that didn’t have cars had family members come and pick them up. Nearly everybody who bailed out left things behind, but it was amazing seeing some of the useless stuff they took with them, like computers, and stereos, and desk lamps. They just weren’t thinking the scenario through to its logical conclusion. I probably should have bailed early on too, while there might have been gas still available. But I made the mistake of sticking around an extra day, waiting to see if things were going to get back to normal. Big mistake. I should have gone didi mau and not worried about missing any classes.

  “I was able to buy some gas before the stations in Pueblo ran out. I had to wait two hours in line. They were limiting everyone to six gallons, positively no filling of cans, and strictly greenback cash. It was thirty dollars a gallon for premium and twenty-eight for regular. I always kept a few hundred dollars or so in cash on hand for contingencies, and the gas wiped out most of that. I had to try three instant teller machines before I found one that had any money left. I took out six hundred of the six-hundred-and-two dollars that I had left in checking, and I got a cash advance on my VISA card. The maximum I could take was nine hundred, so I took the max.

  “It started getting weird in a hurry. At this point the power was still on, the water was running, the phones were working, and the central heating co-generation plant for the campus was still running. Most of the classes were still meeting on schedule. But each successive night it got a little stranger in the dorms. One gal on the third floor of our dorm had a gallon jar full of coins, and she used it to empty out all the candy machines. Most of the people who were left in the dorms were starting into some stage of mental breakdown.

  “My roommate, Javier, packed a few things and went to stay at his girlfriend’s apartment. When he was packing up he kept chanting to himself, ‘What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?’ There were some students from Taiwan on our floor that were crying and practically screaming: ‘We go home now! We go home now!’ What a lousy situation for them. Here they were in a foreign country, they could hardly speak the language, and suddenly things got terminal. It made me count my blessings. At least I had a clear destination with some way of getting there, a couple of practical rifles, and a pretty well-stocked bug-out bag.

  “The night before I left, a few of the
football players started cleaning the food out of the dorm Dining Commons and the Joe O. Center, and stockpiling it all, plus a bunch of water, up on the fourth floor. They thought they were pretty smart. They disabled the elevators and had the fire escape doors barricaded with couches and desks. Those dumb bunnies mainly had baseball bats for self-defense. Talk about having no clue about eventualities. It was just a matter of time before somebody with guns came and cleaned them out. And even if they had the necessary coercive force to hold their position, what were they going to do for heat that winter? Once the co-gen plant was down and the electricity was kaput, they’d be S-O-L.

  “With all this going on, I could see the handwriting on the wall. It was going to get very ugly once people started getting hungry, and that was going to be real soon. I figured that it was definitely strength-in-numbers time, so I started going through the ROTC department phone roster, starting with the MS-4s and working my way down. The cell phone system was down, and nobody answered their land line phones. They had all bugged out. All that I got was either continuous rings or answering machines. I remember Cadet Pickering had a funny message. It just said, ‘Will the last student leaving Escalante Hall please turn out the lights?’

  “Finally, I got hold of somebody, but it wasn’t a cadet. It was Ross, I guy that I knew who lived on the first floor of the dorm. Ross was in my Wednesday evening Bible study class. One time he happened to mention to me that he kept a Model 12 shotgun in his room, that he used it to shoot skeet. I made a little mental note of that. So he was the first guy I called after I went through the cadet roster. He answered on the first ring. Our deal was that I would guard him while he hauled his stuff to his car, and then he’d guard me.

  “It worked out just fine. Ross had his Model 12 all right. The night before, he’d used a tubing cutter to cut the barrel off at about nineteen inches. A shame to butcher a collectible gun like that, but ‘desperate times call for desperate measures.’ Nobody messed with us. By that time there was no campus security left around, and the Pueblo police and County Sheriff’s departments had bigger fish to fry. You could hear lots of sirens, any hour of the day.