The discussion of Lendel’s proposal went on through three additional meetings over the course of the next two days. Most of the debate concerned whether or not Kevin’s house could be made into a defensible retreat. This matter was settled by Jeff, who suggested that a series of tunnels and bunkers could be dug under and around it. Waterproofing these bunkers could be accomplished using the Grays’ four remaining rolls of heavy sheet plastic.
Jeff suggested that because there was not enough plate steel available, the windows of the house could not be properly protected. He suggested that ballistic protection for those behind the windows could be accomplished by constructing large wooden boxes to place just inside the windows. These boxes would be filled with rocks and packed soil. He mentioned the fact that sand would also work as filler for the boxes, but would be inferior because sand would pour out of the boxes, if they were hit repeatedly by bullets. The main detractor to the rock barricades, Jeff said, would be that they would block light.
Kevin agreed, but added that on the positive side, they would also act as excellent heat sinks to absorb and slowly release heat gathered by the solar windows during daylight hours.
When it finally came to a vote, Kevin’s plan passed overwhelmingly. It was decided that the split would be made the next spring. Mike would be the titular head of the new retreat, and Doug Carlton would be its tactical coordinator. Della Carlton would be in charge of gardening. Kevin, as the owner of the house, would become the logistics coordinator. Lon and Margie would also make the move to Kevin’s. Meanwhile, back at the original retreat, Jeff would become the new tactical coordinator, and Rose would become the logistician.
CHAPTER 23
Vicissitude
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom, It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
—William Pitt, before the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
Geographically distinct units were formed from the Northwest Militia, as planned, late in the April of the fifth year. To avoid confusion amongst the local citizenry that they protected, they designated those at the original retreat as “Todd Gray’s Company” and those at Kevin Lendel’s house as “Michael Nelson’s Company.” The responsibility for patrolling was divided along a line east-west between the retreats. Todd Gray’s Company was to patrol the northern half of the sector, while Michael Nelson’s Company patrolled the southern half. Separate CB channels were assigned to each company for locals to use to contact either company.
On the fifth of May, Mary was in the garden plot transplanting some young tomato plants that had been started in the greenhouse a few weeks earlier. As she was methodically digging holes for each of the plants, she heard a strange engine noise in the distance. Just moments after she first heard the noise, she was astonished to look up and see two light aircraft approaching from the south. She dropped her trowel, snatched up her AR-15, and ran to the house.
By the time she was in the house, the Mallory Sonalerts were wailing, and everyone at the house was at their “stand-to” positions, scanning their assigned sectors of fire.
“Does anybody have any idea where those planes came from?” Mary asked.
Sitting at the C.Q. desk, Jeff shrugged his shoulders, and reached over to turn off the “panic button,” silencing the piercing alarm. The engine noise was clearly louder now. From the LP/OP, Terry called in on the TA-1, “They’re pusher prop jobs, twin seat, tandem style. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there’s just one pilot in each. They’re definitely circling us. Everybody stay put.” The planes circled the house a second time, just a hundred yards above the ground.
From the front of the house, Todd declared, “Hey, wait a minute, it looks like they’re getting ready to land. Yep, they are landing down on the county road.” The two planes landed in rapid succession on the straight stretch of county road below the house. Todd was surprised by how short a distance it took for the planes to land and come to a full stop. The planes looked identical, except for their color. One was painted dark green. The other was tan. He heard their engines roar up in tempo as the planes turned and taxied back to the front gate. The planes came to a stop at the front gate, and their engines shut down. Both pilots lifted their canopies and took off their headphones, almost in unison. Two figures, one tall and one short, hopped out of the planes, wearing digital pattern ACUs and tan boots.
Todd shouted loud enough for everyone at the house to hear, “They are painted drab, but those sure don’t look military. Have any of you heard of anyone in the area that owns an ultralight?” There was no reply. Todd pondered for a moment. “Hey, you know, Dan told me that Ian Doyle was in an ultralight club. I sure wish Fong was still here. He’s probably seen pictures of Ian’s plane. He said that it was a zippy little thing, and I think he said that it was a two-seater.”
“Who is this Ian fellow?” Rose asked.
Mary answered, “An old college buddy of Todd and Dan’s. He has a wife and daughter. That might be him, or all of them, in those planes down on the road.”
Ten minutes later, after a cautious squad-sized approach by the bounding-over watch method, Todd and Ian Doyle were sharing hugs. “Wow! Long time no see. What brings you here?”
“It’s a long story, Todd. Suffice it to say that we left town in a hurry when a very large number of muy malo hombres took over. It was muy peligroso there. So we did some Van-dammage—just to whittle them down, you understand—and then we took off. It took a few inquiries in Bovill, but we found your place here easily enough.”
Todd took a long look at the plane behind Doyle, staring at just below the wing root, where it was stenciled “EXPERIMENTAL.” He said insistently, “You can tell me the whole story later. First tell me about these ultralights. They are really a sight to behold.”
Ian turned to caress the fuselage of the flat forest green-painted plane behind him. “To begin with, technically, they aren’t ultralights, although they use a lot of the same design features. Legally, these birds are classed as light experimentals. These birds are both Laron Star Streaks. I paid just under thirty thousand for mine, when I picked it up new from the factory in Borger, Texas, back in ’98. We towed it home in its trailer behind our Suburban. The Star Streak comes with a lot of standard goodies like dual controls, an ICOM radio, electric start, electric brakes, three-position half-span flaps, electric trim, and a pretty complete set of VFR instruments. I added a GPS navigation box and active noise reduction headphones to this one. It’s essentially a poor man’s general aviation plane, but legally it’s a light ‘experimental.’ But it’s too heavy to be classed as an ‘ultralight’ under FAA regs.
“With its enclosed canopy, it’s one of the best light experimentals for long-range flying. In fact, one guy flew a similar model Laron from London to Beijing and wrote a book about it. As I’m sure you know, the main advantages of ultralights and light experimentals is that they are so thrifty on gas, and have a super short takeoff roll—usually under two hundred feet—and very low stall speeds. The Star Streak only weighs about four hundred pounds, empty. The other neat thing about our Larons and most similar light experimentals and ultralights is that they are not restricted to av-gas. In ours here, for example, you can burn any grade of gas down to about eighty-five octane. If I adjusted the carb jets, I suppose they would even burn ethanol or methanol. Luckily, I haven’t had to try that yet.”
Doyle turned to the trim woman with an olive complexion standing beside him. She appeared to be around thirty-five years old. “I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. This is my wife Blanca. I’ve written to you about her, but we haven’t seen each other face to face since college, so you’ve never had a chance to meet.”
The attractive woman in digital camo ACUs extended her hand, and Todd shook it firmly. Gray said quietly, “Encantado.” She replied in a soft accent, “A pleasure finally meeting you, Meester Gray.”
“As you probably recall from my e-mail, I met Blanca when I was stati
oned down in Hondo,” Doyle continued. “That was back in my ‘Terry and the Pirates’ days, when I was a lieutenant—not too long out of transition training.
She was a civilian working in flight ops at Teguchigalpa. Blanca was already a qualified single engine pilot when I met her. Talk about love at first sight, eh conchita?” Blanca smiled and blushed, nodding her chin to her shoulder.
Gesturing to the other plane, Ian said, “We swapped for Blanca’s Laron just after the stock market tanked. I got it from an old fart civilian who was in the Phoenix Metro ultralight club. He bought this one as a kit. He said that it took him almost two years to build it in his spare time. He finished building it in ’99.
It had very low hours clocked on the engine. His was stored in the same style enclosed trailer that we had for mine. I traded him my Sten gun, a suppressor with nomex cover, a whole bunch of magazines, and a thousand rounds of nine-millimeter ball for it. Fair enough swap, I suppose, since unregistered and suppressed submachineguns don’t grow on trees. We could both see the handwriting on the wall by then. He knew what I needed, and I knew what he needed: I needed some more transportation, and he needed some more firepower. I asked him why he wasn’t planning to bail out of Phoenix. He said that his wife refused to budge an inch. They had their whole life wrapped up in their house. Since he was stuck there, he didn’t need the plane, but he certainly needed a serious self-defense gun.”
Doyle stepped toward the back of the fuselage, deftly ducking under the wing, and went on. “The Star Streaks cruise at just over one-hundred-and-twenty miles an hour at eighty-percent power, which is pretty fast for a light experimental. Of course, that seems like crawling when you are used to wearing an F-16, but I like ’em. The cockpit layout is even similar to a Falcon.
Not exactly fly-by-wire controls, though. This model uses an eighty-five-horse Hirth F-30 engine. It’s a great little plant. It just hums along and sips gas—only about five gallons an hour at eighty-percent power. Both of these planes are identical except for the propellers. Mine uses a four-blade composite, but the prop on Blanca’s is the older composite three-blade.
“The Hirth is a powerful little engine. It will make the Larons climb at twenty-five-hundred-feet per minute when it is in normal configuration with just one man on board, but of course a lot slower climb the way we have them loaded down right now. The planes have a rated useful load of five hundred pounds. I’m afraid that we exceeded that limit when we took off from Prescott. Between the heavy load and the high elevation of the airport, our takeoff distances were outrageously long—at least, that is, for a light experimental. But luckily, we had a long straight stretch of road to take off from.”
Blanca looked around anxiously. “Ees there anywhere where we can put dese birds where they whon’t get stolen?”
Mary answered, “We’ll put them both in the Andersen’s big hay barn, just down the road. It’s a nice dry barn. The wings should hopefully fit through the front. It was left open on that side to let the big New Holland harvester in. It’s a three-sided affair. The farm is deserted, and the barn is almost empty now.
They gave us permission to use the place. Don’t worry—when the planes are pushed to the back of the barn, no one will see them there. And, as further insurance, it’s just within line of sight of our LP/OP, up on the hill.”
“Ell-Pee-Oh-Pee?” Blanca asked, quizzically.
“Sorry, Blanca. I’m afraid that we are used to talking in ‘acronese’ around here, and not the Air Force acronym dialect you’re probably used to. LP/OP is a ground pounder acronym for listening post/observation post.” Pointing to the nearby hill, Mary explained, “Basically it’s a glorified hole in the ground. If you look very closely, you can see it up on the hill there. It has a good view of the area. It’s for observation in daylight, and for listening at night.”
Moving the planes into the barn took only a few minutes. They were able to taxi the planes under power to within twenty feet of the barn. From there, they were pushed in by hand. Going in, the planes’ thirty-feet long wingspans cleared the entrance with just a foot to spare on each side. As they were pushing the first plane in, Mary asked, “How many gas cans have you got in there and how far can you fly without refueling?”
Doyle pointed through the canopy at the rear seat area, and cited, “Originally, the Star Streaks only had a range of around three hundred and twenty miles at eighty-percent power. The main tank is fourteen-and-a-half gallons.
But I added some big bladder tanks to both planes. They aren’t connected directly to the primary fuel system. I cheated and installed a couple of little Black and Decker Jackrabbit hand pumps alongside the front seats, with extra long hoses. To transfer fuel from the bladder to the main tank, you just put the Jackrabbit in your lap and crank away. The bladder tanks extend our range to about four hundred and eighty miles without landing to refuel, when we are at max takeoff weight. If we were in a light configuration, they could maybe even go five hundred and fifty miles.”
Ian’s plane came to a rest with the tip of its nose less than a foot from the rear wall of the barn. He inched past the nose and walked around to the other side of the plane, talking as he walked. “They are both quite a bit lighter right now, since we have less gas and we had to barter some of our stuff for fuel.” He tapped on the Plexiglas with his index finger and said, “I have these five-gallon gas cans strapped into the backseats of both birds, but they are nearly empty, too. Aside from some clothes, sleeping bags, tools, and aeronautical charts, most of the weight on board is fuel, oil, guns, ammo, water, and MREs. You know, just the essentials in life. At present we’re down to less than eight gallons of fuel between the two planes….”
Mary interjected, “Don’t worry about that. We still have over four hundred gallons of stabilized unleaded premium in the tank here. It will only be good for another year or two, so we might as well use it up. I think that it is nearly all ninety-two octane, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Terry—she’s our logistics honcho. But she’s up at the LP/OP right now.”
After they had pushed the second plane in, Todd declared, “Don’t worry about all your gear, we’ll come down with the pickup truck later this afternoon and take it up to the house.”
Before they left the planes, Doyle used a socket wrench to remove the nose wheels from both planes, and buried them under some loose hay near the front of the big barn. “They won’t be going far without these,” he said. As they walked out of the barn, Ian slung his suppressed MAC-10 over his shoulder.
Blanca did likewise with a stainless steel folding-stock Mini-14 GB. Todd was disappointed to see that they didn’t carry any extra magazines. He made a mental note to correct that glaring deficiency.
As they walked, Blanca was bemused at the way the militia members walked at five-yard intervals. “Why are you walking so far apart?” she asked with a laugh.
“Force of habit,” Mary explained. “In case of an ambush, you are at much greater risk if you are bunched together.”
They chatted amiably as they hiked back to the Grays’ house. Once they were inside, Rose served up an early lunch of raw carrots, apple slices spread with reconstituted peanut butter, and freshly baked bread. It was over lunch that Ian and Blanca started to recount their story. Mary set a TRC-500 to the
“Vox” setting, so that Terry Layton, who was still up at the LP/OP, didn’t feel left out.
Munching on some bread, Ian began, “The 56th Fighter Wing had just started a rotation to Saudi. It was just two years before the Crash that we switched back from a tactical training wing to a tactical fighter wing. I came onboard just a few months into the transition. Anyway, when all the trouble started, since I was the wing maintenance officer, I was stuck back at Luke, catching up on paperwork. I was also taking an idiotic mandatory ‘Diversity, Sensitivity, and Sexual Harassment’ class. The frickin’ class lasted a whole week. I had orders to catch up with the wing in late November.
“But then, when the riots got going in ea
rnest, they planned an emergency redeployment of virtually all of the close air-support aircraft in the Air Force inventory back to the States. Some weenie at the White House must have dreamed that one up. Our wing was going to deploy to Hurlburt Field, down in Florida. Criminy! Could you imagine F-16s and A-10s versus rioters? Talk about overkill! I never heard what happened to our squadrons after that. I was too busy with problems of my own—like finding drinking water for Blanca and myself.”
“And your daughter?” Mary asked.
Doyle’s face clouded with emotion. Stiffening, he replied, “Linda didn’t make it, ma’am. She died five years ago. She was in Detroit, doing her annual six-week-long ‘Grandmom and Grandpop’ visit with my folks. It was the first time that she was old enough to go on a commercial plane by herself. Blanca wanted to stay home to relax, do some pastels, and a bit of surfing the Internet.
We were homeschooling her, so Linda wasn’t on a normal school year schedule. Blanca and Linda liked to go up to Michigan in the fall. They get some nice fall colors up there.”
Ian paused and looked at the ground. “By the time we realized the magnitude of the situation, most of the flights had been canceled, and the few that were still flying were booked solid. In retrospect, what I should have done was played the old ‘you bet your bars’ game and commandeered a D-model Falcon to zip up there to get her. Instead, I took the conservative route and just hoped that the riots wouldn’t last long or spread outside the downtown area of Detroit. I also figured that if worse came to worse, my dad’s gun collection could handle any rioters that came down their block. I was wrong. I got a call from one of their close neighbors who managed to make it out of Detroit alive. She said that looters got really pissed when my dad shot some of them.
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