Triple Ought, a Shareware Novel by James Wesley, Rawles A Novel of the Millennial Crash and its Aftermath Third Edition. Copyright © 1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles. All rights reserved. Note: This novel was originally titled The Gray Nineties. It was later re-titled, greatly expanded, and revised. _________________________________________________________________ This publication is distributed as shareware. This means you get to read it before paying for it. If you find the novel entertaining, informative, and/or motivational, you are strongly encouraged to support the author's efforts by sending $5.00, preferrably in cash or US Postal money order. Shareware only works if you make it work. Send shareware payments to: James Wesley, Rawles c/o PO Box 642 Penn Valley, California 95946 USA Please include a note indicating the $5.00 is for "Triple Ought." _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought: TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 01 The Crunch Chapter 02 Old Friends Chapter 03 Ready and Able Chapter 04 Gearing Up Chapter 05 Squared Away Chapter 06 M-C-Ls Chapter 07 New Friends Chapter 08 Dawn Chapter 09 The Templars Chapter 10 Spring Chapter 11 The Northwest Militia Chapter 12 The Raid Chapter 13 For An Ounce of Gold... Chapter 14 The Parting Chapter 15 Chasseurs Chapter 16 Hello Chapter 17 Good-bye Chapter 18 Federales Chapter 19 Infrastructure Chapter 20 Vicissitude Chapter 21 Incursion Chapter 22 Egress Chapter 23 Dan's War Chapter 24 Abrams Chapter 25 Tenacity Chapter 26 Ought Six Chapter 27 Causatum Appendix A Links (sorry, under construction) Appendix B FAQ Appendix C About the Author Appendix D Interview with James Wesley, Rawles Appendix E Reader's Letters Your feedback is encouraged! Send it to the author by e-mail at rawles@oro.net. _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought, Third edition, "Without prejudice" per UCC 1-207 Publication Copyright ©1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles (rawles@oro.net). All rights reserved. Web space provided by ammon@teleport.com. [IMAGE] www@teleport.com Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 1 The Crunch "...nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago--their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time you're going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don't need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall." - Gene Roddenberry When The Crunch came, it did not arrive without warning. By the turn of the century, Federal spending was still out of control, and the debt and deficit were generally considered unstoppable. A Congressional Budget Office report revealed that in order to pay just the annual interest on the national debt for the year 2000, it would take 100% of the year's individual income tax revenue, plus 100% of corporate and excise taxes, and 41% of Social Security payroll taxes. In early August of 2000, nearing the end of his second term in office, the lame duck President, derided in the press as Son of Bill, was troubled by the stagnant economy, rising interest rates, and creeping inflation. Instead of reducing the growth in government spending, he launched a costly bank lending stimulus package and another costly round of his pet infrastructure building programs. By the Summer of 2000, interest on the national debt consumed 92% of government revenue. The Federal government was borrowing 161% of annual revenues. The national debt had ballooned to 120% of the gross domestic product and was compounding at the rate of 16% per year. Across the Atlantic, international bankers began to vocally express their doubts that the U.S. government could continue to make its interest payments on the burgeoning debt. In mid-August, the chairman of the Deutsches Bundesbank made some Òoff the recordÓ comments to a reporter from The Economist magazine. Within hours, his words flashed around the world via the Internet: ÒA full scale default on U.S. Treasuries appears imminent,Ó he said. He had spoken the dreaded ÒDÓ word. His choice of the word ÒimminentÓ in conjunction with the word currency exchanges the next day. T-bills crashed simultaneously. Within days, U.S. Treasury paper was selling at 20 cents on the dollar. In short order, foreign investors began liquidating their U.S. paper assets--stocks, bonds, treasury bills--virtually anything denominated in U.S. dollars. After some half- hearted attempts at propping up the dollar, most of the European Union nations and Japan announced that they would no longer use the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. To help finance the ever-growing debt, the Federal Reserve had decided to make the ÒtacticalÓ move of monetizing ever greater portions of the debt. The printing presses were running around the clock printing the new style currency with enlarged portraits. The official domestic inflation rate had jumped up to 16 percent at the end of August, 2000. To the dismay of the Fed, the economy refused to bounce back. The balance of trade figures grew steadily worse. Leading economic indicators declined to a standstill. The Federal budget, instead of contracting in response to the scale back in the economy, continued to expand, primarily because of the interest burden of the Federal debt which totaled nearly five trillion dollars. Jittery investors increasingly distrusted the government, the stock market, and even the dollar itself. In September, new factory orders and new housing starts dropped off to levels that could not be properly measured. Corporations, large and small, started a massive round of layoffs. The unemployment rate jumped from 12 percent to 20 percent in less than a month. The catalyst for the real panic, however, was the stock market crash that started early in October. Unlike the previous crashes, this time the U.S. markets slumped gradually. This was due to "circuit breaker" regulations on program trading that had been implemented after the 1987 Wall Street slump. Instead of dropping precipitously in the course of one day as it had before, this time it took eleven days to drop 4,150 points. Nobody could believe it. None of the "market experts" believed that it could go down that far, but it did. Only a few ÒcontrarianÓ analysts predicted it. Finally, the government was forced to suspend all trading. There was almost no one buying any of the issues that came up for sale. Because all of the world markets were tied inextricably together, they crashed simultaneously. The London and Hong Kong markets were hit worse than the U.S. stock exchanges. The London market was closed five days after the slump started. The Hong Kong market, which was even more volatile, closed after only three days of record declines. Late in the week of the stock market collapse, the domestic runs on U.S. banks began. The quiet international run on U.S. banks had begun a month earlier. It took the GDP (generally dumb public) that long to realize that the party was over. The only investors that made profits in The Crunch were those that had invested in precious metals. Gold soared to $3,800 an ounce, with the other precious metals rising correspondingly. Even for these investors, their gains were only illusory paper profits. Anyone who was foolish enough to cash out of gold and into dollars after the run up in prices would have soon lost everything, because the domestic value of the dollar collapsed completely just a few weeks later. The dollar collapsed because of the long standing promises of the FDIC. "All deposits insured to $100,000," they had said. When the domestic bank runs began, the government had to make good on the promises. The only way that they could do that was to print money--lots and lots of it. Many Americans were already leery of Federal Reserve Notes due to the currency exchange that began in 1996. They became even more apprehensive when rumors suggested, and then news stories confirmed, that some intaglio printing presses that had previously been used to print one dollar bills had been converted to print fifty and one hundred dollar bills. With the printing presses running day and night turning out fiat currency, hyperinflation was inevitable. Inflation jumped from 16 percent to 35 percent in three days. From there on it climbed in spurts during the next few days to 62 percent, 110 percent, 315 percent, and then an incredible 2100 percent. Thereafter, the value of the dollar was pegged hourly. It was the main topic of conversation. As the dollar withered in the blistering heat of hyperinflation, people rushed out to put their money into cars, furniture, appliances, tools, rare coins--anything tangible. This superheated the economy, creating a situation not unlike that in Germany's Weimar Republic in the 1920s. More and more paper was chasing fewer and fewer available goods. With a superheated economy, there was no way for the government to check the soaring inflation, aside from stopping the presses. This they could not do, however, because depositors were still flocking to the banks to withdraw all of their savings so that their assets wouldn't be gobbled up by the inflation. One radio talk show host described this situation as "like watching a snake eat its own tail." All that the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. could do was watch it happen. They had sown the seeds decades before when they started deficit spending. Now they were reaping the whirlwind. The workers who still had jobs quickly caught on to the full implications of the mass inflation and insisted on daily inflation indexing of their salaries, and in some cases even insisted on getting paid daily. Supermarket shelves were completely emptied in a three day panic. Anyone on a fixed income was wiped out financially by the hyperinflation within two weeks. This included pensioners, those drawing welfare, and those on unemployment insurance. Few could afford to buy a can of beans when it cost $150 dollars. The riots started soon after inflation bolted past the 1000 percent mark. Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles, were the first cities to see full scale rioting and looting. Most other large cities were soon engulfed. When the Dow Jones average had slumped its first 1,500 points, Todd Gray made his "mobilization" calls and sent a multiple-addressee e-mail to the six members of his retreat group still in the Chicago area. There was no need to call Kevin Lendel. He had been coming over for dinner and extended conversations for the past three evenings. Most of the group members agreed to attempt to make their way to the GrayÕs home in Idaho as soon as possible. The only voices of doubt came from the Laytons and Dan Fong. When Todd called Dan, he listened to his full spiel, and then said, "Yeah, Todd, remember what you did the last time the market dropped like a rock? You went positively ape. You were Chicken Little, and the sky didn't fall, now did it? I remember the 'emergency meeting' that we had at T.K.'s. You were really panicky. You even had Mary loading magazines from stripper clips during the meeting, as I recall. Now how do you know this isn't just another false alarm?" Dan Fong's question was answered a few days later when he was on his way to work. He slowed down when he saw a line of people stretching city two blocks ending in front of the First Chicago Bank on Columbus Avenue. "Jeez," he said to himself, "It's six o'clock in the morning, and they're already lined up. Looks like we're in for some seeeerious shit." Just around the corner, Dan had to stop and gawk, along with several other drivers. A man was smashing an ATM machine with a tire iron. Fong surmised that the machine was either out of cash or had been shut down by the bank. The man was still in the process of venting his rage with the tire iron when Dan drove away. By early November, there was almost continuous rioting and looting in every major city in the U.S. Due to the financial panic and rioting, the November election was ÒpostponedÓ to January, but it never took place. Rioting grew so commonplace that lists of riot locations were read off in a laundry list--much like traffic reports--by news broadcasters. The police could not even begin to handle the situation. The National Guard was called out in most States, but less than half of the Guardsmen reported for duty. With law and order breaking down, most of them were too busy protecting their own families to respond to the call-up. An emergency call up of the Army Reserve three days later had an even smaller turn out. All over America, entire inner city areas burned to the ground, block after block. No one and nothing could stop it. On the few occasions that the National Guard was able to respond to the riots, there were some massacres that made Kent State seem insignificant. Many factories in proximity to the riots closed "temporarily" in concern for the safety of their workers, but never reopened. Most others carried on with their normal operation for several more days, only to be idled due to lack of transport. Shipping goods in the United States of the late 20th century in most cases meant one thing: 18 wheel diesel trucks traveling on the interstate highway system. The trucks stopped rolling for several reasons. One of the most obvious reasons was the flood of refugees from the cities that jammed the highways. As cars ran out of gas, they blocked many critical junctions, bridges and overpasses. Some highway corridors in urban areas turned into grid-locked parking lots. Traffic came to a stop, motionless cars began to run out of gas, and the forward movement of traffic was never resumed. In some places, cars were able to back up and turn around. In most others, people were not so lucky. There, the traffic was so densely packed that drivers were forced to just get out of their cars and walk away. Every major city in the United States was soon gripped in a continual orgy of murder, looting, robbery, rape, and arson. Older inner city areas were among the hardest hit. Unfortunately, the design of the interstate freeway system put most freeways in close proximity to inner city areas. The men who had planned the interstate highway system in the 1940s and 1950s could not be blamed. At that time, downtown areas were still flourishing. They were the heart of industry, population, commerce, and wealth. Thus, it was only logical that the highways should be routed as close to them as possible; preferably through them. These planners could not then have predicted that in 50 years that the term inner-city would become synonymous with poverty, squalor, welfare, drugs, and rampant crime. America's once proud and efficient railroad system, long the victim of government ineptitude, was unable to make any appreciable difference in the transportation crisis. Most of the factories that had been built in the past 30 years had been positioned near highways, not railroad tracks. Also, like the highways, most rail lines passed through urbanized areas, placing trains at the same risk as trucks. Gangs of looters found that it did not take large obstructions to cause train derailments. Within a few hours of each derailment they stripped the trains of anything of value. Some factories managed to stay in operation until early November. Most had already closed, however, due to failing markets, failing transportation, failing communications, or the failing dollar. In some instances workers were paid through barter, in the form of the company's product, rather than cash. Chevron Oil paid its workers in gasoline. Winchester Olin paid its workers in ammunition. The last straw was the power grid. When the current stopped flowing, the few factories and businesses still in operation were forced to close their doors. Virtually every industry in America was dependent on electric power. The power outages forced even the oil refineries to shut down. Up until then, the refineries had been operating around the clock trying to meet the increased demand for liquid fuels. Ironically, even though refineries processed fuel containing billions of BTUs of energy, most of them did not have the ability to produce enough electric power to supply all of their needs. Like so many other industries, oil refiners had made the mistaken assumption that they could always depend on a stable supply of electricity from the grid to power their computers and operate the solenoids for their valves. The power outages caused a few dramatic effects. For example, at a Kaiser aluminum plant near Spokane Washington, the power went out during the middle of a production shift. With the plant's electric heating elements inactive, the molten aluminum running through the "hot process" end of the plant began to cool. Workers scrambled to clear as much of the system as possible, but the metal hardened in many places, effectively ruining the factory. If the plant were ever to be re-opened, the hardened aluminum would have to be removed with cutting torches or jackhammers. Electricity also proved to be the undoing of prisons all over America. For a while, order was maintained. Then the fuel for the back-up generators ran out. Prison officials had never anticipated a power outage that would last more than two weeks. Without power, security cameras did not function, lights did not operate, and electrically operated doors jammed. As the power went out, prison riots soon followed. Prison officials hastened to secure their institutions. Under "lock down" conditions, most inmates were confined to their cells, with only a few let out to cook and deliver meals in the cell blocks. At many prisons the guard forces could not gain control of the prison population, and there were mass escapes. At several others, guards realized that the overall situation was not going to improve, and they took the initiative to do something about it. They walked from cell to cell, shooting convicts. Scores of other prisoners died at the hands of fellow convicts. Many more died in their cells due to other causes; mainly dehydration, starvation, and smoke inhalation. Despite the best efforts of prison officials, well over half of the country's more than 80,000 federal prisoners and 850,000 state prisoners escaped. Many of these escaped prisoners were shot on sight by civilians. Unfortunately, most of the escapees found their way into the vicious wolf packs that soon roamed the countryside. The economic depression and resultant chaos that gripped America also occurred world wide. Each evening, Todd and Mary turned on their Drake R8-A shortwave receiver, and listened to the civilized world disintegrate. It was a sort of macabre form of entertainment. In many cases, radio stations went off the air altogether. The first to go was Radio South Africa, followed by the BBC, Radio Netherlands, and Radio Deutsche Welle. On one notable evening of listening, Todd and Mary were listening to HCJB, Ecuador, and were surprised to hear gunfire in the background as the news announcer spoke. Then, even more incredibly, the radio station was taken over by revolutionaries while they listened. The Grays turned off their receiver after the microphone was taken over by a "Commandante Cruz" who was shouting in rapid-fire Spanish. With the same radio, Todd and Mary were also able to monitor amateur radio broadcasters throughout the western United States. For a brief time after most other U.S. stations had vanished, WWCR in Nashville Tennessee remained on the air at 3.315, 5.070, 9.475, and 15.685 megahertz. Todd had the most success with the amateur band centered on 7.2 megahertz. The news that they heard from these ham operators was almost universally bad. They reported civil unrest in nearly every city with a population over 40,000. Most of the ham stations were operating on standby power, as there were only a few isolated areas that still had regular utility grid power. In Bovill, Idaho, the town nearest the Gray's farm, there were only a few noticeable effects of The Crunch during its early stages. The saw mill in nearby Troy, which had cut back to one shift per day two months earlier, shut down completely. The nearby Shell gas station sold out of gas in a two day period. The local residents had a hard time dealing with the galloping inflation. This phenomenon had an only limited effect in Bovill, however, as the local grocery store was sold completely out of stock by the time inflation reached triple digit figures. When there was little or nothing available to buy, the value of the dollar was inconsequential. As in other small towns across America, most people around Bovill just stayed at home, glued to their radios and television sets. In rural Idaho, the riots that were breaking out in the major cities seemed a million miles away. The catch phrase of the day was "Isn't it terrible what's happening in New York?" To Todd, the phrase had a tone that he had heard before that used when people talked about famines and floods overseas. It appeared to Todd that the local residents were trying to deny that what was going on had any impact on them. Only when there were disturbances reported in Seattle, six and a half hours away by car, did the Grays hear any of their neighbors express concern for their personal safety. Things were getting steadily worse all over the country, but in remote regions like the Palouse Hills, there was a time delay. During this pause, Todd started making some final preparations. First, he closed and latched all of the steel shutters over the windows of their house. Mary commented that it made the house seem dark and gloomy. Todd just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, I guess we'll just have to get used to it." Next, Todd mandated that they lock-- and keep locked--the gate at the county road, the gate on the chain link fence around the house, and the doors to the house. Mary suggested that they also keep their Power Wagon pickup and her Volkswagen Beetle locked up in the garage with their distributor rotors removed. Mary also suggested that she and Todd have a meeting with the Latah County civil defense coordinator in Moscow. By this time, however, the phone line--and with it their Internet connection-- was dead. They finally decided that the benefits of such a meeting were outweighed by the expenditure of now precious gasoline that they would have to use in the 65 mile round trip to Moscow. Further, Todd did not rule out the risk of social unrest in Moscow--even if did have only 30,000 residents. Todd and Mary also starting using up the contents of their refrigerator and freezer. With extended power failures expected, they did not want food to spoil unnecessarily. Todd methodically sliced, marinated, and dehydrated nearly all of the elk, venison, and salmon in the chest freezer. The exhausting process took five days. With the same thought in mind, Mary took the initiative of re-charging all of the nickel cadmium and nickel hydride batteries for their flashlights and various electronic gear. As they only had two small chargers, this took nearly as long as the jerky making. Because they did not know how rough things might get, or whether or not any of the other group members would show up to help secure the retreat, Todd completely refilled the firewood storage area in the basement. He told Mary, "It would be ironic to make all these preparations and then get blown away doing something so mundane as walking back and forth to the woodshed." As further insurance, Todd and Mary also began carrying their Colt .45 automatics at all times. They also loaded half of the magazines for each of their guns. Todd's plan was to alternately unload these magazines and load the other half of their magazines every six months. This would prevent the magazine springs from "taking a set." On the few trips that he took into town or down the road to Kevin Lendel's house, Todd carried both his .45 and his short barreled Remington shotgun. There was no worry of being arrested, as there was no prohibition on carrying a loaded gun in public. In fact, Idaho was one of the few states where a loaded gun could even be carried in a car. The only prohibition was on carrying a concealed weapon without a State permit. Even those permits were easy to obtain. Surprisingly, the U.S. postal service still made regular deliveries until early November. The Grays took advantage of this in several ways. First, they sent letters to their family members, letting them know that they were safe and well. Next they wrote all of the group members still in the Chicago area, once again urging them to "Get out of Dodge." They hoped that by the time that their letters arrived that the group members would have already started their move. After a long talk, Todd and Mary decided to make an $800 pre-payment on their electric power bill. They also sent a check covering the next five years property taxes on their farm. Although it appeared that the local government would likely evaporate in the next few weeks, they felt more secure knowing that they wouldn't lose their farm to taxes as some of their relatives had in the depression of the 1930s. The check to the tax assessor office was relatively small, as their annual tax assessment was only $540 for their house and 40 acres. Writing these two checks brought the balance of their checking account down to $220. Their savings account had long since been cleaned out when the bought the house and upgraded it. Part of their decision to write the checks was based on the fact that the dollars that they represented were rapidly becoming worthless. They agreed that it was better to spend them on something useful than to see them lost to hyperinflation. Todd and Mary walked down the hill to their mailbox in silence. Todd had his Remington riotgun tucked under his arm. As they got to the box, Todd blurted out: "This seems so absurd. Here we are, mailing checks drawn on a bank that has closed its doors--probably forever, denominated in a currency that is basically worthless, to a couple of organizations that will probably be non-existent soon after the checks arrive!" He had meant the comment to be funny, but Mary didn't laugh. She quietly tossed the envelopes in the box, closed its lid, flipped up the flag, and turned back toward the house. There were tears welling up in her eyes. Four days after the riots started, Paul and Paula Andersen, the Gray's neighbors to the south, dropped by the house to explain that they were going to go "double up" at their son's large cattle ranch near Kendrick, about 25 miles south of Bovill. The Andersens offered the Grays the use of their house, large barn, water supply, firewood, stored hay, and pasture in their absence. Todd said to Paul, "Thanks for the offer, but I probably won't need to take you up on it. I'll be happy to keep an eye on your place while you're gone, though." Andersen thanked Todd and handed him a slip of paper. He said, "Here's my son's address and phone number in Kendrick. When the phones are working again, give us a call." They never saw the Andersens again. All of the neighbors with property contiguous to the Grays left under similar circumstances. Most of these neighbors didn't bother to stop by and make their good- byes. By the haste of their activity when packing up, Todd presumed that they were in too much of a hurry for formal good-byes. The neighbors across the county road, the Crabbes, waved to Mary as they pulled their heavily laden flat bed Ford pickup and trailer out their front gate with their last load. Mary later mentioned to Todd that it seemed like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath. They never saw the Crabbes again, either. Todd and Mary began hearing the term "doubling up" with great regularity as they tuned from channel to channel on their C.B. radio. It was the local parlance that developed for two or more families relocating and setting up mini strongholds. The residents of Latah County were plain country folks, but they weren't stupid. When times got tough, most realized that a single family on a remote farm would be no match for a band of looters. It was a natural and logical reaction to cluster into small groups. Both Todd and Mary had trouble sleeping during the interval between the onset of the riots and when the other members of their retreat group started to arrive. Adrenaline wouldnÕt let them sleep. Todd found himself lying awake in bed, listening anxiously for anything that sounded out of place. Every time their dog Shona let out a loud growl or bark, both of them would immediately be on their feet. Todd would look out the back shutters while Mary checked the front. Once the rest of the group members arrived, they would be able to set up a regular guard schedule at the listening post/observation post (LP/OP) that Todd had prepared. Until then, however, they would have to be light sleepers. The stress of getting only snatches of sleep began to show after only a few days. The first of the members of The Group to arrive at the retreat were Mike and Lisa Nelson. They came roaring up in their Bronco and their Mustang, late in the evening of October 15th. They reported that they had not run into trouble on their trip, aside from having to pay $28.50 a gallon for gas at one stop. They said that there were a lot of people on the road, even late at night, and that a lot of the cars they saw were "full to the gunnels and towing U-Haul trailers." Mike said that they had both called in sick the day before they left, and that neither he nor Lisa had bothered calling back again. When Todd asked if this was wise, Mike replied, "Todd, if you had seen the panic that we saw, you'd have done the same thing. We're not going back. Ever. We split the whole frickin' program. Besides, at this point, I probably couldn't get my job back even if I wanted to, so screw it." The conversation didn't go on much longer because Lisa said that they were both exhausted and wanted to get some sleep. They had driven straight through from Chicago. The next to arrive, 17 hours later, were Dan Fong and Tom Kennedy. By prior arrangement, they had convoyed out west together. Dan was driving his Toyota pickup. He was followed closely behind by Tom's flat brown painted Bronco, which was riding nearly down on it's overload springs. It was not until they had come to a stop in the gravel parking area next to the garage that Todd noticed that the Toyota's windshield, passenger side window, and rear window on the camper shell were missing. What clearly looked like bullet holes peppered the passenger side of the camper shell Their "debriefing" went on much longer than the Nelson's. _________________________________________________________________ Still reading? Good! Did you send in your $5.00 yet? Please do! (Hey, it just takes a minute to drop an envelope in the mail.) Shareware only works if you make it work. Support the author's efforts by sending $5.00 cash or postal money order to James Wesley, Rawles, c/o P.O. Box 642, Penn Valley, California 95946, USA ON TO THE NEXT CHAPTER BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought, Third Edition, "Without prejudice" per UCC 1-207 Publication Copyright ©1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles (rawles@oro.net). All rights reserved. Web space provided by ammon@teleport.com. Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 2 Old Friends "A few honest men are better than numbers." - Oliver Cromwell The morning following the arrival of Dan and T.K., there was still no sign of Ken and Terry Layton. Dan said that he was beginning to wonder if they would ever arrive. When Mary voiced the same concern to Todd, he smiled and said, "Don't worry, if I know them, they'll get here even if they have to cover the whole distance in three-to-five second rushes." After his conversation with Mary, Todd went to see Mike, who was inventorying his equipment in his wall lockers in the basement. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Todd said, "I think it would be wise to start a round the clock guard mount, starting tonight. I'd like you to work up a duty schedule. We'll use that sked until Ken and Terry arrive, then we'll set a permanent watch." Mike raised an eyebrow and asked, "So you really think that they'll make it here? You know, if they had a chance to make it out in their Bronco or Mustang, they'd be here by now. You saw how shot up Dan's rig was. That's pretty strong evidence that we're in a world of hurt." Todd gave Mike Nelson a glum look. "I know Mikey, I know. At this point, though, all we can do is hope and pray." They kneeled and bowed their heads. They prayed aloud, beseeching protection and travel mercies for the Laytons. Later that morning, Todd called for a formal "debriefing" of the Nelsons, Dan, and T.K. Everyone got together in the living room of the house, with the exception of Mary, who was up at the LP/OP. "The drive itself was a piece of cake, really," Mike began. "Like I told Todd before, the hardest part was loading up all of our gear. We spent half a day putting everything into three heaps: 'Essentials,' 'Second Priority,' and 'Nice to Have.'" "We thought that we had pre-positioned most of our gear here at the retreat, but once we started setting out everything that we still had at the house, we realized that we had seriously under estimated the weight and volume." Lisa interjected, "I suppose that we should have done a practice load-up a long time ago. It would have made our under-estimation immediately apparent, and prevented us having to consciously think through what we absolutely needed to take. Anyway, after prioritizing, we started loading. The guns got packed first. Then all of our ammo. Then our Alice packs. Then twelve 5-gallon gas cans. They were loaded on the rack on the tail gate and just inside it, so we could re-fuel without having to unload anything to get to the cans." "Next we loaded our 'tactical' food supplies--you know--the MREs and various freeze dried and retort packaged stuff. We are thankful that we brought most of our MREs here last year. Otherwise we would have had to leave them behind. This got us through the 'Essentials' pile. The real headaches came with the 'Second Priority ' pile: clothing, bulk foods, field gear, most of our medical supplies, the hand crank generator, and so on. We just didn't have room to fit it all in, even with both the Bronco and the Mustang. I considered trying to get a rental trailer, but I figured that by then they'd all be long gone." "The end result was that we had to leave behind half of our wheat, our generator, our kerosene lamps, all of our cans of kerosene, and most of our survival reference books. Before we took off, I left the extra gear along with a good-bye note on our next door neighbor's back porch. I figured that there was no use having them go to waste. Besides, I didn't think that we would have the opportunity to come back for another load. The only thing that we took from the "Nice to Have" pile was my old family Geneva Bible. Its been through floods, tornadoes, you name it. I'm glad its with us." Lisa interrupted again: "By the time we got everything packed, it was three a.m. We were going to coordinate, but the phone was dead. As it turned out, leaving in the middle of the night worked out for the best. There was not much traffic. Even still, we saw quite a few cars and pickups towing trailers. Mike drove ahead of me. We talked to each other on the C.B. We didn't chatter. It was just the occasional 'slow down!' or 'watch out for this truck that's coming up to pass!' We had the C.B.s set to channel 27, upper sideband--the Get Out Of Dodge (G.O.O.D.) frequency--so Mike occasionally tried to reach the Laytons, or Dan or T.K., in case they were monitoring, but they either weren't listening or were out of range. I was really nervous the whole way. I had the doors locked and kept my Colt Gold Cup tucked under my thigh on the seat of the car." Mike continued on: "We didn't want use up any more of the gas in cans than we had to, so we stopped several times to fill up. One station was charging $28.50 a gallon for all grades of fuel." Lisa interjected: "That was the station where there was this guy and his family stranded in their station wagon. Because the gas station had started to refuse checks and credit cards the day before, they wouldn't even accept their own franchise card. This guy had every credit card in the world--American Express, VISA, you name it, but only eighteen dollars in cash. Just as the guy was taking off his fancy gold wristwatch to offer the station manager in exchange for a tank of gas, Mike walks up to him and hands him six $100 dollar bills. He thanked him and offered to send the money back later. Mike says to him 'No prob, keep it fella. Besides, by the time you'd get a chance to mail me the money, people will be kindling their fires with $50s, and wiping their asses with $100s.'" Mike concluded: "Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we got here, and saw no serious disorder along the way. But, like Lisa said, their were a lot of determined looking people with very heavily loaded vehicles on the road." Dan and T.K.'s debriefing was next. Tom Kennedy began: "I was listening to my Cobra C.B. base station, set to the primary G.O.O.D. frequency, as I was packing up. All of the sudden, I heard this voice saying: 'Dude, are we getting out of here or what?' It was the Fong-man. Boy, I was glad to hear him. I 'rogered' back, and he told me that he was all packed up and ready to go. I said, 'Great, come on over and help me load up.' He showed up in about ten minutes. As it turned out, he was on 'security' while I packed. I made sure that I had a gun handy throughout the process as well. I had my Colt Commander cocked and locked in the inside pocket of that flyer's jacket I bought last year." "Basically, I packed while Dan sat in the cab of his Toyota, holding his old Model '97 trench gun. I asked him why he wasn't carrying his Remington 870. He said, 'This gun is much more ominous...' Then he whips out this bayonet about a mile long and snaps it on. 'This otta make any hungry neighbors think twice,' he says. By the time I was done loading up, it was nearly midnight. I brought all I could think of, and got the old Bronco pretty well loaded down. When we took off, Dan was in the lead." Dan stood up and continued: "I started packing up a day before T.K.. I couldn't figure which of my guns to bring along, so I said to myself, 'To heck with it, I'll take all of them.' Most of them are still wrapped up in blankets at the bottom of everything else in the back end of the Fong-mobile; all twenty nine of them." "Because I had my doubts, I worked the next two days after I got Todd's 'The sky is falling!, the sky is falling!' call. My last afternoon at the cannery, the general manager gave me a list of fifteen employees that I was supposed to hand pink slips to at four o'clock. I said to him, 'Sorry boss, can't do that. These people depend on their jobs, and we depend on them. We can't put out a safe to eat product without a minimum level of staffing on each shift.' Then he said to me, 'If you refuse, I'll have no choice but to let you go as well.' I said back to him, 'You can't fire me, because I just quit,' and walked away. I didn't even bother to clean out my desk. I just grabbed a few of my engineering reference books, and the Sykes-Fairbairn 'letter opener' that I kept in the top drawer. On my way out, I stopped by the employee's thrift shop and bought 16 cases of various late-date-of-pack canned fruit and vegetables." Fong scanned the room and then went on. "Soooo, that same evening I started packing up. By then the phones had been out for a couple of days. It took a lot longer than I thought to pack up. As T.K. told you, I spent the next few hours keeping a look out while he got his gear loaded. We left late, ten o'clock--no I guess it was after midnight." Tom nodded in agreement. Dan shrugged his shoulders and went on. "It didn't seem that late. Anyhooo, we got ourselves on the road. On our way out of town we saw one house totally in flames, but not a single fire truck was in sight. We also saw two cars that had been gutted. The traffic on the freeway was nearly bumper to bumper, even at midnight. All of the gas stations were either closed or had big signs mainly sheets of plywood spray painted with the words 'NO GAS.'" "By the time we were an hour and a half out of Chicago, we started seeing cars that had run out of gas alongside the road. A couple of times I had to swerve around people trying to flag us down. They were really desperate. By that time, I figured that stopping to help anybody out would be far more dangerous than it was worth. By the time we crossed the State line there were cars out of gas on the shoulder every half a mile. It was at that point that I got on the radio to T.K. and suggested that we cut over to the older two lane highway that parallels the interstate. Things were really starting to look hostile on the Interstate, so we cut over as soon as we got the chance. By that time, T.K. and I were both low on fuel." "My gauge read 1/4 full, and T.K. radioed to say that he'd switched over to his reserve tank, so I started looking for a good place to refuel. I picked a side road that went out by a bunch of farms. There were no cars on it at all. We stopped about a mile down this side road at a straight stretch where we could see both ways for quite a distance. I got out with my Model 97, and had my Beretta nine mil in a shoulder rig. T.K. got out with his CAR-15, and slung it across his back. I played security for him while he refueled, and then he did the same for me." "Just as I was putting the last of a third Jerry can into my rig, T.K. gave a whistle, and I saw a set of headlights coming. Both of us got down on the far side of our rigs, with our guns laid across the hood, trying to put as much engine block as we could between us and them. When the lights got within about 150 yards, I could see it was a patrol car." "At that point, both T.K. and I played it cool, and we set our long guns down in grass in the low spot by the by the side of the road. Turned out it was a sheriff's deputy. When he stopped his patrol car behind our rigs, T.K. walked back to talk with him. Needless to say, he was very curious about us, and wasn't taking any chances. He had a big Glock .45, and it was out of the holster." "Tom explained to him that we were on our way west, and had just stopped to refuel. He said that he had already figured that out, and pointed his flashlight at the jerry can sitting by my rig. At first he thought we'd both been riding in my Toyota, and that we had stopped to siphon somebody's Bronco. It wasn't until we showed him our driver' licenses and the registration for both vehicles that he started to relax." "Boy was I scared. The last thing that we needed was to get locked up in some county jail in Iowa just as the shit was hitting the fan. As it turned out, the dude was pretty cool after all. We shot the breeze for a bit while I finished gassing up, and cramming the cans back in the rigs. Just before he left, he said, 'I hope you make it your hidey hole all right.' He sure had us pegged. Anyway, we waited 'til he was well out of sight before we picked up our guns. He never spotted them. Jeez, that would have taken even more explaining." After a brief pause, T.K. spoke: "I was scared to death, too. After the deputy left, we said 'man oh man were we lucky,' and got turned around and headed back for the highway. We tooled along just fine. In fact, Dan kept picking up speed. Sometimes he got up to about seventy five. I had to get on the C.B. and yell at him to slow down. We made another refueling stop using the same method just before dawn in eastern South Dakota, and then again about 10 in the morning. After that stop, I took the lead. By then, there were virtually no cars on the road at all." "Not long after we crossed into Montana we had to slow down because there was a pair of wrecked cars almost blocking both lanes. At first, it looked like just another accident, two cars smashed together, typical fender-bender. Then I realized, hey, there aren't any intersecting roads there, so how could they have gotten into a fender bender unless one car had rear-ended the other? I knew that couldn't be the case, because one of the cars was practically perpendicular to the road. By the time I had figured all that out, we were practically on top of them. Luckily, the shoulder was pretty wide. I didn't have time to call Dan on the C.B. to warn him. I just hit the gas and swerved around onto the shoulder around the wreck. All I could do was hope that Dan would catch on and do just the same thing. Luckily, he did." Dan picked up the thread of the story: "I saw the munched cars up ahead, and then I saw a puff from T.K. 's tail pipe when he hit the gas. A second later, I did likewise. I followed right behind. As we went around the two wrecked cars, I saw two guys with shotguns stand up behind the car on the right hand side. They weren't riotguns either, just regular old pump action birdguns. When that happened, I just ducked, and kept on going. They got about three or four shots off at me." "The first shot took out my windshield and passenger's side window. The second and third pretty well peppered my camper shell. Needless to say, it took out the back window of the camper, as well. Nothing inside got wasted except my sleeping bag. It's leaking goose down like crazy now. Some pellets also hit two of my gas cans, but luckily they were empties. Otherwise, the back end would have been swimming in gas." "Judging by the holes, they must have been using shells loaded with good-sized buckshot. Probably #4 buck, possibly a bit larger. It went through my camper shell and just kept on going. Anyway, after we got about ten more miles down the road, we pulled off along a straight stretch. T.K. pulled security while I assessed the damage. The windshield was shattered. I could hardly see through it. The passenger's side window had disintegrated into chunks." "I spent the next ten minutes kicking out the windshield and sweeping out the majority of the broken glass. It was pretty cold, and I didn't want to freeze my tail off driving without a windshield, so had to spend another five minutes pulling gear out of the back of my rig until I found the box with all my cold weather clothes. I bundled up in my field pants with the cold weather liners, a wooly pully, my down jacket, and then my DPM camouflage smock. I also put on my army gloves with liners and one of those navy watch caps that we got at Ruvel's Surplus. Even with all that, I felt cold, but at least I didn't freeze. That was the only exciting thing that happened on the way here. The last part of the trip was rather anti-climactic. Saw some nice looking deer and elk, though." With the formal de-briefing over, the newcomers continued their tales of high adventure over lunch. To everyone's surprise it was a hearty spread, with fresh meat, cheese, and vegetables. T.K. asked, "Hey, what's with wasting all this fresh food? I thought you'd be starting on the storage food by now." "Savor it while you can, T.K.," Todd said. "We're in the process of using up all the food from the refrigerator and freezer first. We don't know how much longer we'll have power." T.K. looked glum. He moaned, "We'll be eating wheat berries for breakfast tomorrow, I suppose." Everyone sitting around the tabled laughed. o o o After concerted study, Todd and Mary Gray had chosen the Palouse Hills region of north central Idaho as a place to look for their retreat. It fit all of their criteria. It had a low population density. It was at least five hours drive from the nearest major metropolitan area. The entire region had deep rich topsoil and diverse agriculture. Most importantly, it had precipitation through most of the year, eliminating the one weak link in most modern agriculture in America--water. The region did not need electrically pumped irrigation water to grow crops. A "vacation" trip in the summer of 1996 proved out their hopes about the region. Everyone they met was friendly, there was no traffic, and most of the pickups had gun racks and N.R.A. stickers. Aside from the occasional double-wide mobile home or satellite TV dish, it looked more like 1966 than 1996. To Todd and Mary, who had both grown up in the suburbs of Chicago, the price of land and houses seemed absurdly low. The price of a typical three bedroom house on 20 acres averaged from $80,000 to $100,000. After three subsequent trips looking at real estate, they finally found a 40 acre farm that they wanted to buy. It was two miles out of Bovill, a small town 30 miles east of Moscow, Idaho. Bovill was situated at the eastern fringe of the Palouse Hills. The town was a bit colder than much of the surrounding area, but that also meant that the price of land was lower. Further, the economy of the area had a mix of both agriculture and timber to support it. Todd also liked the prospect of being close to the Clearwater National Forest. As he put it, the 1.9 million acre forest would make "a big back yard." The brick farm house was built in 1930. It needed some work, but it met all of their needs. It had a full basement, three small but adequate bedrooms, a wood cook stove that also looked 1930s vintage, and a metal roof. There was also a garage/shop, a barn, a wood shed, a meat house, a large orchard of fruit and nut trees, and a spring house 100 yards up the hill behind the house. Unlike most of their neighbors, who were on well water, they had a 5 gallon per minute spring gravity fed to the house. Because the current owners were retiring and moving to Arizona, a seven year old John Deere tractor also went with the house. The owners had asked $82,000 for the place. The Grays offered $68,000. After two counter offers, they finally settled on $73,500. They paid cash. o o o The path that led Todd and Mary to the Palouse hills began one evening in October, 1990, when Todd and his college roommate Tom Kennedy were walking out of an art theater in downtown Chicago. They had just been to see a revival of the Australian film "The Road Warrior." Todd said, "Pretty good movie, T.K., but not too believable. Personally, I think that in a situation like that, the gasoline would be gone long before the ammunition, not the other way around." "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing myself," T.K. said. "Also, the best way to survive something like that wouldn't be to zoom around from place to place. That just increases contact with other people and consequently increases the chance of trouble. Mel Gibson's character should have set up some sort of retreat or stronghold." After a few moments of silence he asked, "Do you think a scenario like that--total collapse of society--could ever really happen?" After considering T.K.'s question, Todd replied, "Given the complexity of society, and the interdependence of systems on other systems, it probably could. In fact, all it might take would be economic trouble of the same magnitude as the depression of the 1930s to set something like that off. That could be all it would take, and the whole house of cards would collapse. Our economy, our transportation system, communications systems--everything, really--is so much more complex and vulnerable than back in the 1930s," said Todd. T.K. stopped in his tracks. Todd stopped and turned to face him. T.K. looked Todd in the eyes and said, "If something like that is truly possible, even on an outside chance, then I think it might be prudent to make some preparations." Back at their dorm room, their conversation on the subject went on with great intensity until three A.M. Without knowing it at the time, Todd and T.K. had formed the nucleus of an organization that eventually would have 23 members, regular meetings, logistics standards, a set of tactical standard operating procedures (S.O.P.s), and a chain of command. Oddly, despite its formal organization, their survival group was not given a name for many years. It was simply referred to as "The Group." When they recruited new members, Todd and T.K. described "The Group" as a "mutual aid" organization. Members could depend on help from each other, both in good times and in bad. If a member had their car break down, or got into a financial bind, for example, the other group members were sworn to give immediate aid to the best of their ability--no excuses, and no questions asked. The group's major benefit was that in truly hard times it would provide strength in numbers and a solid logistics base, allowing the members a greater chance of pulling through unscathed. Within a few months Todd and T.K. had gathered a number of friends into The Group. Most of the members were fellow students at the University of Chicago. Because nearly all of them were short on cash, they didn't get far beyond a lot of talk until most of the members had graduated from college, and started making decent salaries. For the first few years following its inception, Todd and his fellow group members talked, argued and reasoned their way into a formal organization. Todd held the overall leadership and guiding role. He was simply called either "boss" or jokingly, "head honcho." T.K. became the group's personnel specialist. He counseled group members and ironed out wrinkles in interpersonal relations. In addition, T.K. emerged as the organization's main recruiter. He carefully sized up each prospective group member, weighed their strengths and weaknesses, and did his best to judge how each would react to a prolonged period of high stress. _________________________________________________________________ Still reading? Good! Did you send in your $5.00 yet? Please do! (Hey, it just takes a minute to drop an envelope in the mail.) Shareware only works if you make it work. Support the author's efforts by sending $5.00 cash or postal money order to James Wesley, Rawles, c/o P.O. Box 642, Penn Valley, California 95946, USA ON TO THE NEXT CHAPTER BACK TO THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought, Third Edition, "Without prejudice" per UCC 1-207 Publication Copyright ©1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles (rawles@oro.net). All rights reserved. Web space provided by ammon@teleport.com. Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 3 Ready and Able "...it would be appropriate... to have organized groups charged to conserve certain data and certain civilized forms, and to foster a new beginning when the right time for it comes." - Roberto Vacca "The Coming Dark Age" Only a few minutes after the de-briefing ended, the TA-1 field telephone at the "Charge of Quarters" ("C.Q.") desk clacked three times in succession. Mike snatched it up. "Mary says that a pickup truck just stopped at the front gate." Mike asked: "Pickup? ...but Ken and Terry own a... Bronco!" Anxious looks spread around the table, then in a blur everyone was snatching up their weapons and heading for the windows. If it weren't serious business, it might have looked comical. Everyone was bumping into each other. Todd was shouting, "Hold on!, hold on!, We can't all man the front windows! Kevin, Dan; watch the back!" Meanwhile, Mike was still at the C.Q. desk with the field telephone held to his ear. Mike yelled: "Mary says whoever it is, is out of the truck and is waving his arms." By now, Todd was scanning the road with his rubber armored binoculars. "I don't believe it," he said, adjusting the focus wheel. "Well, I'll be! The old super-warrior came for a visit. You can relax everybody. It's Jeff Trasel." Todd and T.K. jogged down the hill to the gate, their rifles carried at high port. As they approached Jeff's Power Wagon, they could see that Jeff was agitated. "Got any room for an ex-member with a big problem?," Trasel asked. Todd cocked his head and said, "Could be. What's the matter, Jeff?" Trasel blurted: "It's my girlfriend. She's been shot." They got Jeff's truck through the gate and up the hill as quickly as possible. Todd clicked his radio from the off to the VOX position. "Mike, call Mary on the land line A-SAP. Tell her we've got a medical emergency at the house. Send Dan to relieve her at the O-P." Jeff's girlfriend, Rose, was in bad shape. Jeff and Todd carried her into the house. Rose was unconscious. They temporarily laid her on a blanket on the floor near the wood stove. Mary quickly but thoroughly examined her, briefly removing three blood soaked pressure dressings. She had been shot in the left side of her upper chest. The bullet entered just below her collar bone. It then traveled at an upward angle, shattering the upper portion of her left shoulder blade before exiting the top of her shoulder. The entrance wound was scarcely larger than the diameter of the bullet. The exit wound, in contrast, looked like a patch of red raw meat three inches in diameter. "What happened?", Mary asked, as she was digging through a large box of sterilized medical instruments that were individually wrapped in zip-lock bags. "We were on our way up here. We stopped because Rose said that she had to pee. She said that it couldn't wait. So I stopped by the side of the road, and Rose scampered off into the bushes. Just as she was walking back to my truck, a Corsica with Wisconsin plates pulled up behind me and stopped. Two guys jumped out, and one of them intercepted Rose before she could get back in her door. He had a big revolver pointed right at her head. She just froze there. The other guy walked up to my door, and leveled a Mossberg riotgun at me. What the hell was I supposed to do? I was thinking we were history." "The next thing I knew, the guy with shotgun ordered me out of the cab. Then, he had me open my flight jacket and he pulled my .45 out of its shoulder holster. He put that in their car. Then like a fool, he starts rummaging around under the seat without finishing searching me. I figured that this was my one and only chance. I pulled my little AMT Backup .45 out of the inside pocket of my flight jacket, and shoved the barrel right up against the back of his head. Now, I had the drop on him. I told him to verrrry slowly put the shotgun on the seat of the truck and back out, again, real slowly. At this point, his partner started getting panicky. He didn't know whether to take a shot at me, run, or what." "Next thing, I ordered the guy on my side of the truck face down on the pavement, keeping one eye on his fidgety partner. I gave the guy a quick frisk. All that I came up with was a Buck pocketknife. The other guy just stood there kind of shaking. Finally, he says, 'Drop the gun and let him go, or I'll shoot the girl.' Real original line, huh? Then I said back to him, 'No, you drop your gun, asshole, or I'll shoot both you and your partner. Unlike you, I know how to use a gun.' At this point, he goes into a real panic. He points his gun at me, then back at Rose, then back at me. He was shaking like he had spent too much time in a meat locker. This guy obviously had a room-temperature I.Q., and no nerve whatsoever. Throughout all this, I had my pistol pointed at the back of the head of the guy on the ground. It was the old Mexican standoff." "The next time he switched to pointing his gun at Rose, I leaned my forearms across the hood of my rig and lined up the sight rail on his chest. Then, when he looked back at me, his eyes got as big as saucers and he started back pedaling. As soon as the muzzle of his gun swung away from Rose and toward me, I gave him the 'double tap.' I hit him once in the chest, and the second shot grazed the top of his head." "When he heard my shots, the guy on the ground tried to get heroic, and jumped up at me. I emptied the four rounds left in the magazine into him. The last shot was right into his face. The whole back end of his head exploded. I guess I was on autopilot at that point." "Then, I realized that the other guy--the one with the revolver--wasn't yet one-hundred-percent dead. He was sitting on the ground gurgling and waving his gun around. He started pulling the trigger. By pure chance, one of the rounds hit Rose. Before I could put in a fresh magazine and line up the sight rail on him, his revolver was empty. He kept clicking on fired chambers, with the muzzle pointing sorta randomly. After another few seconds, he collapsed." "I grabbed my medic's bag and got to Rose as soon as I could. I saw that it was a through and through wound, saw it wasn't a major hit, and applied direct pressure. I got sterile bandages on both sides of the wound as soon as I could, and then got her into the truck. I picked up both of their guns and threw them on the floor of the passenger side of the truck. Then I went and got the full-sized .45 they had stolen from me and put it back in my shoulder rig. I just left their bodies and their car where they were." "Because we were only about an hour away, I figured my best bet was to beat feet up here. It was hard to believe, but Rose didn't go into complete shock. She was coherent until just before we went through Bovill. Then she passed out. Up until then though, she was able to monitor the amount of bleeding, and put pressure on the top of the exit wound dressing with her right hand. Luckily, Dan had once described how to find your place to me, so I didn't waste a lot of time looking for it." By now, Mary had pulled the instruments she thought that she'd need out of their sterile wrappers. "What's her blood type?" Jeff replied, "I don't know, but she keeps a donor card in her wallet. Its in her purse out in the truck." Trasel sprinted away to look for it. Mary estimated that Rose had lost at least two or three pints of blood. She then checked Rose's pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and pupils. Speaking to those gathering in the room like a group of surgical interns she said: "She's pretty well out. Her pulse is steady at 65, but her BP is a bit on the weak side--110 over 40." An impromptu surgery room was set up in the kitchen. The kitchen table was used as the operating table. Lisa washed the table down with half the contents of a bottle of denatured alcohol, while T.K. put on a five quart stock pot of water to boil. Jeff returned, reporting that Rose had indeed been carrying a blood donor's card. As it turned out, the only other person at the retreat with Rose's blood type, A negative, was Dan Fong. Fortunately, Mary had learned how to give transfusions from a surgeon at the hospital where she formerly worked in Chicago. The surgeon was curious to know why she wanted to master an obsolete technique. She explained that she thought it might come in handy if their was a major disaster and the hospital's supply of whole blood ran out. He winked and said, "Oh, so you're one of those survivor types." The surgeon was very precise in his instructions. He also gave her a complete description of the equipment needed. "None of the large companies make traditional person to person transfusion sets anymore," he explained. "Everything is geared to working from bladder packed units of whole blood, plasma, or solutions like Ringer's lactate like the paramedics use. However, all the tubing connectors are modular, they use the same fitting as a Heparin lock, so you can set up a double length piece of tubing with needles at both ends." Soon after her conversation with the surgeon, Mary added six disposable sets of transfusion rigs to her mini-surgical kit. She even taught a class to the group members on the technique. In the class, she stopped just short of starting an actual transfusion, but she showed how to position both the donor and the recipient, how to set up and monitor the flow of blood, and demonstrated how to "prep" an arm or leg artery on two group members. Both Dan and T.K., who was the group's only type O negative universal donor, had their arms prepped to give transfusions. Next, Mary prepped Rose's arm. Dan was seated in a tall bar stool that was put up on the table, straddling Rose's lower legs. Mary then loosened the spyghmomanometer cuff on Dan's upper arm to start the flow of blood down the tubing. After purging the air from the tubing, with a spurt of blood landing on the kitchen floor, Mary hooked up the rig to Rose's Heparin lock. "Let me know if you start to feel dizzy, at all, Dan. We'll be drawing you down at least two units." Next, Mary prepared and injected Rose with a heavy dose of Ketalar, a general anesthetic. The dosage was based on a table included with each bottle. According to the table, based on Rose's body weight of 120 pounds, she should receive this dose to yield a fully-unconscious state for four hours. Mary introduced the Ketalar into the flow of transfused blood coming from Dan, using a small bladder of saline linked to the T-connector positioned in the middle of the tubing. After about fifteen minutes, Mary cut off the supply of blood from Dan, and had T.K. take Dan's place in the chair on the table. Unlike Dan, T.K. was given a surgical mask to wear, as the "open" portion of the procedure was about to begin. She started the transfusion from T.K. briefly, and then clamped off the tubing with a set of locking forceps. "We don't have an unlimited supply of blood, so we'll hold off on the transfusion until after I get started with the exploratory," Mary said. Washing her hands once again, Mary donned a surgical mask and a pair of sterile gloves. She then gingerly removed Rose's bandages, sodden with half-clotted blood. "I'm going to probe the entrance end of the wound first." Thirty seconds later, she declared: "It looks clean. The bullet didn't hit anything major on this end." Mary then shifted to the top of her shoulder. "There's a lot of blood-shot here," she mumbled. To T.K., sitting on his eagle's eye view perch, Mary's last sentence sounded more like something someone quartering a deer would say. "I'm going to have to debride quite a bit of this muscle tissue. If the wound channel is this large after collapsing inward, the temporary channel must have been enormous when the bullet went through. There are also some bone fragments from her scapula. Its really trashed. What did she get shot with, anyhow?" "A .357 magnum. And boy am I pissed," Jeff replied. Mary set down the dull probe she had been holding, and picked up a #4 curved scalpel. After resuming the transfusion from Kennedy, she began slowly and carefully cutting away some of the most badly damaged tissue. A few minutes later, Mary spoke again. "Ah haaaah. I see our culprit now. An artery less than two millimeters across, but just a bit too big to clot closed by itself. I'm not skillful enough to rejoin it, so I'll just have to suture it off, and hope that nothing goes necrotic. With arteries this small, its supposedly a fairly safe bet." As she spoke, Mary picked up a "derf" suture needle holder and clamped a pre-threaded 3-0 absorbable suture into it. The suturing took an unnerving twenty minutes. "This is a real pain," Mary said. "It would be a lot easier if this little artery would stay in place and if it weren't spurting blood." When the suturing was completed, Mary asked T.K. to remove the clamp from the transfusion tubing, re-starting the flow of blood. After a couple of more minutes of probing around, Mary said, "Okay, now I'm going to have to do something with what's left of her scapula. The only thing is, I don't know what to do. I've removed the loose bone fragments, but that still leaves a really rough edge. Any suggestions?" There was silence for a few moments, then Dan spoke up: "Couldn't we just file the edge of it smooth?" "Yes, I suppose so," Mary said, "but I don't have anything like a file in my bag of tricks. The only thing that comes close is my bone saw, and that's way too big for this job. What I need is a mini version of a machinist's flat file." Dan then said with his characteristic smile: "I've got a set of Swiss pattern files in my gunsmithing box. You can take your pick from all sorts of profiles. I'll go get them." While Dan was gone, Mary again checked Rose's vital signs. Less than ten minutes later, Dan pulled the chosen Swiss pattern file out of the boiling water, using a huge pair of obstetrics forceps to reach down to the bottom of the stainless steel stock pot. "This should do the trick," Mary said, as Dan handed her the file using the forceps. After five minutes of judicious filing, more probing, a second look at the sutured artery, some irrigation with saline solution, and some swabbing, Mary was almost done. She looked up and noticed that T.K. was looking pale. "Holy cow! T.K., I forgot all about you! You must have pumped out three or four units by now. Todd! Get him clamped off and disconnected. Both Tom and Dan should go lie down and start drinking fluids, pronto. I think that there are still a few bottles of Gatorade in the pantry." Mary spent the next twenty minutes suturing first the lower levels of muscles, and then the layer just below the skin with absorbable sutures. Finally, she sutured the skin closed on both the entrance and exit sides with heavy non-absorbable chromic gut. The entrance wound was relatively easy to suture. In contrast, the exit side took much more time. It was both larger and required more tugging of skin to get it to close together. Only when Mary glanced up at the clock did she realize that more that three hours had gone by since she had started scrubbing up. After again checking Rose's vital signs once again, she said: "Well, that's all I can do. She should make it though. The damage wasn't too great, and I didn't have to try anything fancy. Thank god for Colonel Fackler." "Who is he?", asked Jeff. "He's the Marine Corps surgeon who wrote the chapter on gunshot wounds in the NATO Emergency War Surgery manual. I wouldn't have had a clue how to perform that operation if it weren't for him." With that, Mary pulled off her gloves and went to take a nap. She was completely spent. o o o The first addition to the group was Ken Layton, a lanky, red-haired man with an infectious smile. He was an acquaintance of Tom's. T.K. first met Layton through a catholic "young adults" group. Ken was of interest because he was an automobile mechanic. Although he had the necessary acumen, Ken had shown no interest in pursuing college when he graduated from high school. Instead, he started immediately at a full time job as an automobile mechanic. Turning wrenches was Ken's idea of fun, and he certainly was good at it. By the time he joined the group, Ken had changed jobs twice, and was making $33,000 a year. By 1999, Ken was earning $52,000 a year as the assistant manager of a shop specializing in off the road vehicle repairs and modifications. The next recruits into the group were Mike Nelson, a Botany major at the University of Chicago, and his girlfriend Lisa. Mike met Lisa by chance at the University's Regenstein Library. As Mike was walking through the stacks, he noticed an attractive young woman who was sitting at a study carrel reading Musahsi's "A Book of Five Rings." He soon struck up a conversation with her about martial arts. For Mike, it was practically love at first sight. Lisa was a graphic design major with interests that ranged from backpacking, to Tae Kwon Do, to sport parachuting. Lisa joined the group a few months after she and Mike began dating. For a while, Lisa approached the group as just another one of her many hobbies. Later it became an all-consuming passion that overwhelmed her other interests. Upon getting his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, Mike Nelson was unsuccessful at finding any position relating to Botany. The only positions that he found available were low paying GS-5 pay grade jobs as forest survey assistants. Out of desperation, he ended up taking a job as a Chicago police officer. He graduated second in his class at the police academy. Curiously, Mike found that he genuinely enjoyed police work. Like most newly hired officers, Mike was assigned night patrol duty. However, unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Mike enjoyed the assignment. He later volunteered to continue night shifts, and even asked for assignments in Chicago's rougher neighborhoods. Mike told the other group members that his attraction to police work was the adrenaline rush of stressful situations. He said that the "fun" part of his job was getting into "a worst case do-or-die survival situation every other night." Meanwhile, Lisa found a job as an artist with a large architectural design firm. She mainly did renderings of what a completed building would look like, complete with parking areas and landscaping. Eventually, she got the chance to take on other projects such as design and layout of a promotional brochure for the company, as well as work with the firm's computer system that generated blueprint designs. Although it was not exactly the type of job she would have chosen, she enjoyed most of the aspects of her work, and it paid very well. Mike and Lisa dated for two years before getting married. Although their schedules were not entirely compatible, they had a happy relationship. They both enjoyed the same activities, and both had the survival bent long before they joined The Group. Mike's grandparents had built a bomb shelter in the early 1960s, and both they and his parents had encouraged Mike to be independent and self reliant. Above all, they had told him: Be Prepared. Lisa received similar nurturing. She grew up in a large Mormon family where food storage was a way of life. Her strenuous and often dangerous hobbies had also built confidence, self-reliance and an abiding love for the outdoors. When she was a freshman in college, a fellow dorm resident loaned Lisa a copy of "How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years" by Howard J. Ruff. Reading Ruff's book had already adjusted her to a "survival mind set" as it was termed by The Group. Mike first mentioned the existence of the group to Lisa soon after they first began casually dating, just to see if she would give a positive or negative reaction. When he mentioned the group's plans to "head for the hills if the world falls apart," the first words out of her mouth were: "Will you take me with you?" As their relationship blossomed, Mike and Lisa began spending nearly every weekend together. Most of these weekends were devoted to hiking, rock climbing, hunting, or fishing--anything to get out of the city. It was Mike who first told Todd and T.K. about northern Idaho. During his graduate study, Mike had spent nine months living in Moscow, Idaho. There, he had studied "Growth patterns of the Ponderosa Pine in eastern Washington and northern Idaho." His graduate adviser had loved his paper, but that didn't help him get a job as a working botanist. Mike spoke in glowing terms about northern Idaho. He said, "Its big time survival country. Half the population is composed of survivalists that don't even realize that they are survivalists. Its just their native way of life up there. They definitely have the survival mind set. Almost everybody hunts. A lot of people use wood stoves and they cut and split their own wood. Most people do home canning, and a lot of families are set up with their own reloading presses. Lots of them home school their kids. All in all, they are just a lot closer to the land than your average city dweller, and they are about ten thousand times more self sufficient." The next person brought into the group was Kevin Lendel, a shy, bookish electrical engineering major. His only claim to fame, and virtually his only form of exercise aside from bicycling, was foil and saber fencing. His constant fencing practice gave his a wiry build, tremendous flexibility, and lightning fast reflexes. Kevin was a member of the University of Chicago fencing team for three years. He was never a phenomenal fencer, but he was good enough to help the team win several tournaments. Kevin was not like most of the other members of The Group. He wore glasses with thick lenses, and had a mop of blond hair that he constantly brushed out of his eyes. When he fenced, he wore a green bandanna to keep the hair out of his eyes. Kevin was Jewish. All of the other group members were devout Christians. He was not particularly interested in the outdoors, and until he joined the group he had never fired a gun. However, Lendel did see the wisdom of preparedness, and changed his lifestyle and spending habits accordingly. Lendel was very quiet at most of the group meetings. Typically, he had his nose in a book during most of each of the meetings that were dominated by discussion. This unnerved the others until they realized that Kevin was not missing a word being said. He could actually maintain two points of concentration simultaneously. On the few occasions that Kevin did speak up during meetings, it was either because he had been asked a question, or to make a point that everyone else had missed. One of Kevin's favorite phrases to use at meetings was, "I've just had a blinding flash of the obvious." Many of his suggestions later ended up in written form as S.O.P.s. For example, it was Kevin who first suggested that during times of crisis, every trip outside the perimeter be treated as a patrol, and that as such, the "two man rule" be used. Kevin was also the initiator of group regulations on sanitation and the oft quoted, "Every injury or illness, no matter how slight, will be reported to the group medic as soon as possible." Kevin's motivation as a survivalist was never fully understood by most of the group members. Todd, in awe of Kevin's intelligence, but with doubts about what made him tick, referred to him as "a riddle wrapped in an enigma." After graduating, Kevin put his degree to use as a software engineer for Y-Dyne Propulsion Systems in Chicago. He started out in 1993 as a junior programmer with a salary of $35,500. By 1997, he was the senior systems analyst, and made $76,000. In 1998, Kevin launched a second career as a freelance software writer. He offered his services in Pascal, Fortran, C, and Ada, the specialized programming language used in many projects by defense contractors. When he started doing freelance software, he was not sure if he could make enough money at it as his sole source of income, so he stayed on half time with Y-Dyne. After six months of doing work for a variety of companies, he found that he actually had more work than he could handle. At this point, he resigned from his position with Y-Dyne, and he started working entirely at home, using a Macintosh Power PC 9100, a hybrid IBM-clone, and his prized Sun Microsystems Sparc-5 workstation. Many of Lendel's contracts came from outside of the Chicago area. He generally sent his software using a 56 kilobaud modem. Occasionally, he would send the programs on Zip disks or Jaz disks via Federal Express. FedEx came right to his doorstep, since his house was just off the county road. To his surprise, nearly a third of Kevin's contract dollars came from his former employer, Y-Dyne. Apparently, they couldn't get along without him. Although he did not make quite as much money as he had with Y-Dyne, Kevin enjoyed the escape from the mindless process of commuting, and working 9 to 5. He told the other members of the group that it felt good to get back to working the "hacker's hours" that he had enjoyed in college often working as late as two or three a.m., and sleeping in until noon. Most of Kevin's contracts were to write software for industrial applications. Few of the group members could relate to or even understand the complexity of Kevin's work. It was not until he showed off a dazzling fractal graphics program that he had recently written, that the other group members got a full appreciation of his skills. When Kevin saw Todd and Mary's house in Idaho for the first time, his eyes lit up. He quickly realized that he was looking at his future, as well. Because he worked almost entirely from home, it did not matter if he lived in the suburbs of Chicago, or outer Mongolia. All that he needed to work on his software writing contracts was power, a telephone line, and an Internet service provider. He started looking for a place near the Gray's farm almost immediately. It took a summer of looking and waiting, but Kevin finally found a place that he wanted to buy. Ideally, Kevin would have liked to have bought a parcel contiguous to Todd and Mary's. Unfortunately, all of these farms were 120 acres or more, and none were likely to be on the market anytime soon. In fact, on three of the four sides, the adjoining farms had been owned by the same families for two or more generations. The fourth adjoining parcel, to the east, was 640 acres of land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management, part of the federal government. Beyond that was National Forest. Gray was told that B.L.M. lands were sometimes put up for auction, but that this piece probably never would be because it had historic significance. It was a traditional site for digging camas bulbs, a staple food of the native Nez Perce tribe. In fact, the camas plants still grew there, competing with the non-native grasses that had all but taken over the area. The house that Kevin eventually bought was less that a mile away from Todd and Mary's. It was on the same county road, but farther out of Bovill. His house was an earth-bermed passive solar design. It was situated on 26 acres. About half of the acreage was open, and suitable for hay cutting or pasture. The other half of the land was in second growth pines that averaged 40 feet in height. Kevin would have preferred more land, but he went ahead and bought it. The house was well built, and the price was right, at only $92,000. He paid cash. Todd Gray was 22 years old when he and T.K. first formed the group. By the time Todd entered college, his father had already retired. The owner of three hardware stores in the Chicago area, Phil Gray had amassed the magical $1,000,000 figure, and decided that he should slow down and take life easy. Three years later, when Todd was a sophomore, his father died of a heart attack. Todd's mother Elise was the classic TV mom. Dinner on the table at 6 o'clock. Laundry on Thursdays. Canning in the summer. Homemade candies for Christmas gifts in the winter. Years later, she still talked about Phil as if he were still alive. She died of cancer in 1999. Todd graduated with a Bachelor's degree in accounting. Soon after graduation, he landed a position with Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan, a major accounting firm with branches in major cities throughout the country. It was at about the same time that Todd married Mary Krause, an Occupational Therapy major that he had met during his senior year at the University of Chicago. Mary appealed to Todd for many reasons. First, she was quite attractive. She had waist length naturally blond hair, a cute smile, and a trim, compact body. Todd also liked the idea of dating a woman with a strong background in medicine. As he explained to T.K., "She might be a good prospect for a medical specialist for the group." T.K. replied, "Naaaww, admit it. You like her 'cause she's a total babe." o o o Tom Kennedy was Todd's roommate for all four years of college. As with so many college freshmen, Todd and T.K were assigned to the same dormitory room at random. They had never met before the day that they helped each other move in. They immediately became good friends. Tom, or "T.K." as everyone (including his parents) called him, was reserved, polite, and soft spoken. He was majoring in business administration. Kennedy was the youngest son of a retired Air Force pilot. Upon retiring as a full colonel after 32 years of service, T.K.'s father took up calligraphy as a retirement hobby. This eventually developed into a second career, occupying at least 20 hours a week. He even taught calligraphy classes at a local junior college. His mother was a Spanish woman that T.K.'s father had met while stationed in Spain. His father died in 1996 of a heart attack. His mother died the next year. His half-Spanish ancestry gave Tom black hair, a medium complexion, and dark brown eyes. Because T.K. had been born prematurely, he only reached a height of 5'4". Even at his heaviest, when he was in training for wrestling in high school, T.K. weighed 140 pounds. Because of his small stature, when he was in college he was often mistaken for a high school student. He was "carded" when entering bars well into his thirties. To combat being mistaken for a child, T.K. grew a mustache during the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college. After graduating, T.K. got a position as a management trainee with a Sears & Roebuck store in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He soon rose through the ranks, and in 1997, after a stint at the Sears corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago, he was made the general manager of the Sears store in Wheaton, Illinois. T.K. was always shy around women. He never dated when he was in college, and he never married. Tom remained active in the catholic church. When he was young, he served as an altar boy. After college, he became a lay minister. He helped with communion and training alter boys. When T.K. was in high school his father introduced him to target shooting. He found that he greatly enjoyed engaging in a sport where his small stature was not a handicap. T.K. eventually became an active high power competitive shooter and achieved an expert classification. Although he practiced regularly and went to every match that he could, T.K. never got scores high enough to qualify him for a position on the state High Power team. His dream of shooting at the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio was never fulfilled. T.K. was the oldest of the group members. He was also the first to get out of college and start making a good salary. This gave him the opportunity to become the first group member to get completely squared-away logistically. Like any other dedicated survivalist, T.K. did not rest on his laurels after he had bought his "group standard" equipment. He continued with a well organized purchasing plan, putting away a large stock of storage food, ammunition, medical supplies, and a comprehensive personal library on survival and practical skills. T.K.'s only unusual purchase was a crossbow. He bought a Benedict S.K. 1 with a 150 pound draw weight. He also bought several dozen aluminum broad head bolts, a fishing reel modification kit, 15 spare strings, and a spare limb. At a group meeting in early 1995, T.K. mentioned casually that he had bought the bow. Dan Fong instantly pounced on him, asking him why he wanted a 'medieval" weapon like a crossbow. Kennedy replied, "The crossbow isn't any more impractical than your black powder guns. In fact, it has several advantages. First, it will give us the capability to hunt game silently. That could be a real advantage if we are out in the boonies and want to avoid detection. Second, crossbows are much more effective at killing game that traditional bows. That's the reason that they are illegal for hunting in most states. Third, I'll never have to worry about running out of ammunition. Once I start to run low on bolts, I can start making my own. The last advantage is that it takes some 'oomph' to cock the darned thing. Practicing with it is more than just target practice, its also good exercise." Mary Krause became a de-facto member of the group when she became Mary Gray. At the time that they married, Mary knew that Todd was a member of a survival group, but had no idea how deeply involved he was, or the full ramifications of his membership. Mainly, she was surprised at the amount of money that Todd had "invested" in his survival preparations. In six years, he had spent more than $5,000 on guns and ammunition, $3,000 on storage food, $4,500 on buying and restoring a 1969 Dodge Power Wagon pickup, and at least $1,500 on various web gear, backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, et cetera. To her dismay, Mary discovered a thickly padded clipboard that listed hundreds of additional items that Todd intended to buy. With his accountant's mentality, Todd had itemized the purchases, compared prices from several suppliers, set priorities, and noted the sequence in which he planned to buy them. It was then that Mary realized that her plans for long vacations overseas would probably never come to fruition. Just before marrying Todd, Mary landed a job as a sports medicine therapist at Cook County hospital in Chicago. She truly enjoyed the healing arts. Naturally, she became the group's medic. In jest, she was sometimes referred to as the "Medical Honcho." In 1996, Todd was able to work out an arrangement with his manager to begin working half time from home. In requesting the arrangement, Todd was very direct with his boss. He told him that his "forty minute, each-way each day commute" was driving him crazy, and that it was "contributing to premature burn-out." His boss was upset when he heard Todd use the term burn-out, as he had lost several good accountants to the phenomenon in recent years. Even though Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan was an "old school" accounting firm, Todd's boss was able to ramrod through an arrangement whereby Todd could begin to work from home three days of each week. To start working from home, Todd bought himself a Pentium equipped IBM clone with a gigabyte hard disk. He also bought a 28.8 kilobaud Hayes compatible modem. All of the accounting software that he needed was supplied free of charge by his firm. After he began working from home, Todd's boss noticed an increase in his productivity almost immediately. When he mentioned it to Todd, Gray replied, "Well it only stands to reason that if I'm spending four hours less each week on the road, I'm sitting at my computer that much more, right?" A year later, when Todd was offered a raise in salary, he asked to start working entirely from home, instead. When the senior partners in the firm heard about this and got a complete run down on his increased productivity, they gave him both the raise and the go ahead to start working from home full time. Todd was Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan's first full time employee with a "work from home" arrangement. Todd joked that the firm had finally emerged from the Middle Ages. When Mary heard about Todd's raise and new working arrangements, she was ecstatic. They talked until late in the evening about the possibilities of moving to Idaho. When Todd mentioned how late it was getting, Mary said, "What are you worried about? You're commuting down the hall in your slippers tomorrow." The next person to join the group was Dan Fong, an Industrial Design major who eventually landed a job as the engineering manager for a large canning company. Dan, a second generation Chinese-American, had a passion for guns. He was frequently criticized by the other group members as being a "gun nut." Specifically, they chided him for continually adding to his large gun collection, which mainly consisted of exotic guns in oddball calibers. While Dan kept buying guns, his cache of food, ammunition, and medical supplies remained pitifully small. Dan was always a bit chubby, but ate remarkably little. He prided himself on his frugality. He once told T.K., "I save major bucks by eating cheap." Typically he ate a light breakfast, skipped lunch, and after returning from work made a dinner that was invariably dominated by rice. He only cooked meat or fish twice a week. From these few high protein meals, he saved his meat drippings to make a sauce to flavor his rice later in the week. Fong's gun collection changed drastically after he joined the group. It never numbered less than 20 guns, however. When he first joined the group, his collection consisted primarily of target rifles, big game hunting rifles, and black powder muzzle loaders. Toward the late 1990s, the composition of his collection had shifted more towards the paramilitary, but was still exotic. Among others, Dan owned a Belgian FN/FAL assault rifle, a Portuguese version of the Armalite AR-10 (a predecessor of the AR-15, but chambered in 7.62 mm NATO), a SSG "Scharf Shuetzen Gewehr" sniper rifle made in Austria, a Beretta Model 92SB 9mm pistol, two Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistols, including one with a tangent rear sight and shoulder stock, a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver, a Winchester Model 1897 12 gauge riotgun, a McMillan counter sniper rifle chambered in the .50 caliber machinegun cartridge, a scoped Thompson-Center Contender single shot pistol chambered in .223 Remington, and several World War II vintage guns including a Walther P.38 pistol, an M1A1 folding stock carbine and an M1 Garand. Eventually, with much prodding from the group, he also bought a full set of the group standard guns and spare magazines. Jeff Trasel joined the group at roughly the same time as Dan Fong. At 24, Jeff was lingering in junior college for the fourth year. He also still lived at home with his parents, in a small bedroom crammed with bookshelves. Shortly after high school, Jeff did a hitch with the Marine Corps. In the Corps, Jeff was assigned to a Force Reconnaissance Team. An excellent athlete and a bright student, Jeff spent most of his time attending special service schools. No one ever figured out how he wangled it, but in rapid succession, Jeff attended the Marine Corps Force Recon. School, the Army Airborne School, the Army Air Assault School, the Marine Corps Sniper School, the Navy SCUBA School, the Navy Underwater Demolitions School, the Army Ranger School, the Army Pathfinder School, and the Navy SEAL course. In all, Jeff logged more time at special schools than with his actual unit of assignment. When Jeff left active duty in 1992, he had a hard time re-adjusting himself to civilian life. Despite his academic talents, he could not bring himself to enroll in a regular university. Instead, he loafed around the house, worked out, and attended a few junior college courses. At one point, he considered working overseas as a mercenary, but with the war in Rhodesia long over, there were no prospects for "merk work" aside from the Legion Etrange--the French Foreign Legion. Jeff scoffed at the idea of fighting for the government of France. Even though he admired the fighting record of the Legion, he said that he wanted nothing to do with the French Army. The French, he said, "could screw up a two car funeral procession." Trasel contended himself by keeping his military skills current in the Marine Corps Reserve. Because he was not employed, and only a half time student, it gave Jeff the time to take several extra short tours of active duty each year. He typically did two 2 week annual training tours each year instead of just the one tour required. He also put in extra drill days at his unit, doing administrative tasks and keeping the unit's intelligence briefing book up to date. He eventually attained the rank of Staff Sergeant. Jeff added a distinct paramilitary flavor to the organization. During his tenure as the group's tactical coordinator, Jeff insisted that all of the group members get physical exercise regularly, and that the group hold bi-monthly field training exercises similar to those conducted by small military units. Starting with "tactical hikes", Jeff taught the group the essentials of traveling quietly through the bush, hand and arm signals, keeping a proper interval space between members of foot patrols, and so on. Under Trasel's tutelage, the group eventually graduated to night patrols, defensive fields of fire, immediate action drills, standing listening post/observation post (LP/OP) picket shifts, raids, and ambushes. On these "field trip" days, the group members ate military surplus Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) rations. Jeff often joked, "MRE: Thats three lies for the price of one." Most of the group members, including the females, enjoyed the field training exercises. Curiously, one of the most enthusiastic participants was Kevin Lendel. Kevin frequently volunteered to be the point man on patrols. Typically, Kevin was armed with his riot shotgun equipped with a strip of white bandage tape running down the top of the barrel to provide better sighting in low light-conditions. Kevin proved to be an excellent point man. He had acute hearing, outstanding night vision, a fencer's fast reactions, and a curious "sixth sense" about potential ambushes. He liked the position of point man, and quickly earned the respect of all the group members--even the super warrior Trasel. Previously, Trasel had his doubts about how Kevin might react to a "terminal situation." After seeing him in field training, however, Jeff felt as confident as everyone else about Kevin's skills and calm nerve. Because most of the training was done in civilian clothing and without carrying their weapons, it never attracted the attention of law enforcement. When questioned as to their particulars, they were simply "a hiking club." Mike Nelson, as a Chicago police officer, had developed the cover story of "training aggressors for my department's SWAT team," but he never had cause to use it, or even flash his badge. The group was careful to conduct their armed training patrols (using blanks and blank firing devices) in only civilian clothing, and only in remote areas of Michigan. The standing rule was, "If we are carrying guns, no camouflage clothing, but if we are unarmed, camos are okay." Jeff had a few habits that annoyed most of the other group members. Their biggest complaint was that he was notoriously late for group meetings. He also occasionally missed group meetings and other appointments. When confronted about these incidents, he would shrug his shoulders and say "Sorry about that." With a large circle of drinking buddies and several lady friends, Jeff often found too little time available for group meetings. Jeff's other major annoyance was his booming voice and his tendency to verbally chastise other group members for relatively minor faults. Jeff Trasel was a member of the group for only three years. At his last group meeting in 1998, he announced that he was quitting the group because he was "bored", and because the group wasn't "going anywhere." When pressed, he wouldn't be any more specific about his complaints. He just got up and left the Nelson's apartment. With the exception of Trasel, the original group was still intact when the Grays activated their retreat in Idaho. After nine years, the group seemed almost like an extended family. All of the group members felt that they could trust each other with their lives. With the gloomy scenarios they envisioned, they knew that they might have to do just that. _________________________________________________________________ Still reading? Good! Did you send in your $5.00 yet? Please do! (Hey, it just takes a minute to drop an envelope in the mail.) Shareware only works if you make it work. Support the author's efforts by sending $5.00 cash or postal money order to James Wesley, Rawles, c/o P.O. Box 642, Penn Valley, California 95946, USA ON TO THE NEXT CHAPTER BACK TO THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought, Third Edition, "Without prejudice" per UCC 1-207 Publication Copyright ©1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles (rawles@oro.net). All rights reserved. Web space provided by ammon@teleport.com. Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 4 Gearing Up "Oh how great is the interval between the conception of a great enterprise and its execution. What vain terrors! What irresolution! Life is at stake--much more is at stake: honor!" - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller Throughout the 1990s, the Group "geared up" and trained with varying intensity. There was no such thing as a "typical" training session for the group. "Training" was a loose term with eclectic boundaries. It ranged from anything from an evening learning how to can fruit, to a night of practice shooting using tritium sights, to a practice session suturing induced wounds on a dead piglet. Meetings were held twice a month. At least one of the two meetings was dedicated to training. With the greater resources derived from holding full-time jobs, the group members now embarked on a well-calculated buying spree. Purchasing for each member began with a battle rifle, a riot shotgun with a spare "birdgun" long barrel and screw in choke tubes, a .45 automatic pistol, and a .22 rifle for target practice and small game hunting. Next came all of the paraphernalia to support these guns: ammunition, dozens of magazines, cleaning kits, spare parts, holsters, and an Army LC-1 "web gear" harness with canteen and gun magazine pouches. Next, each member was expected to buy a good quality cold weather sleeping bag, and a good quality "four season" backpacking tent. All of these purchases had to conform with specific standards set by the group. The first major point of disagreement in standardizing the group's purchases came when they selected their field uniform. Some of the group's members thought that wearing a camouflage uniform might attract more attention than it was worth. Eventually, however it was decided that camos were a must when Jeff pointed out that they would assure positive identification of group members at a distance. He explained that this would make it difficult for a non-group member to slip into the perimeter of their retreat without being noticed. At the time that the Group was standardizing its uniform, the U.S. Army had long since issued the woodland camouflage battle dress uniform (BDU), which replaced the old olive drab fatigues. Rather than buy BDUs, which were readily available on the surplus market, Todd's group decided to standardize with the British "disruptive pattern, modified" (DPM) camouflage fatigues and jackets, which were then available as surplus at a reasonable price. The reasoning behind the DPMs was that because the BDU pattern was so widely available a military surplus, it had become ubiquitous. It was Kevin Lendel that made the cogent observation that if the Group were to standardize with the BDU pattern, then outsiders might still be able to slip into their perimeter without being noticed. It was better he said, to be in camouflage, but in a different pattern than that normally seen in the States. The only serious drawback to the decision to standardize with DPMs was that the dollar began to rapidly lose value on foreign exchange markets in the early 1990s. The second point of disagreement over standards, and one that was never fully settled, was about the group's standard rifle. Most of the group's members realized the potential of the powerful 7.62mm NATO cartridge (also known as the .308 Winchester), and wanted to standardize with either the Springfield Armory M1A (a civilian version of the Army's M14) or the West German HK-91 battle rifle. Others, mainly the women and those of small stature such as T.K., wanted to standardize with the less powerful 5.56 mm NATO cartridge, (also known as .223 Remington). A number of good defesive rifles were available chambered in this cartridge, including the Colt AR-15 (a semi auto version of the Army's M16) and its collapsing stock and short-barreled sibling, the Colt CAR-15. Two other well-made alternatives were the Ruger Mini-14 and the Armalite AR-180. One of the main lines of reasoning for .223 were that more cartridges per pound could be carried than with .308. This weight would make a difference on long range patrols. The argument over a standard group standard semi-auto rifle raged for three full meetings. Dan Fong voiced the key question: "Why do we need a standard rifle anyway? All we need is a standard cartridge. Everyone can just stock their own spare parts." In reply, Jeff Trasel said, "When we are out on a patrol, and get into a fire fight, some of us will undoubtedly run out of ammunition so damned quick that they won't believe it. At a time like that, when they are shouting to other patrol members for spare ammo, they certainly won't want to be worrying about whether one magazine will fit in another weapon. That's why we absolutely need to have a standard rifle. Interchangability of magazines is the key factor, but interchangabilty of spare parts is also a plus." When the issue could not be resolved, Todd finally put his foot down and set a "dual standard." Group members preferring the .223 cartridge could go ahead, but they had to be either an AR-15s or CAR-15s, because they used the same magazines, and had compatibility for critical spare parts. Those preferring .308--mainly large statured members--would buy a Heckler and Koch Model 91. Period. Anyone who already owned a non-standard rifle could keep it, or those desiring to do so could buy one, but they also had to buy one of the group standard rifles and at least 10 spare magazines. Further, every standard semi-auto rifle also had to be equipped with radioactive tritium night sights. Luckily, the arguments over standardizing a shotgun, pistol, and .22 caliber rifle for the group were neither as lengthy or intense. The group eventually decided to standardize with the Remington Model 870 in 12 gauge, the Colt .45 automatic pistol, and the Ruger Model 10/22 rifle for target practice and small game shooting. When the issue of exactly what model of the .45 auto to standardize on was raised, it was decided that "any model of the .45 (Government Model, Gold Cup, or Commander), as long as its made by Colt" was sufficient, because they all used the same type magazines and had largely interchangeable parts. Eventually, most of the group members bought the Gold Cup model with adjustable sights. The trend toward stainless steel was in force, and most of the group members either bought stainless steel handguns from the outset, or later upgraded to them. In some cases, they sold their old blue steel .45s when they upgraded to stainless steel. Others decided to keep their older blue steel Colts as spares, or for barter. Dan Fong convinced all of the group members to sell off all of their old 7 round magazines, and buy supplies of the new 8 round magazines for their guns chambered in .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol). The newer magazines that held an extra round. At $24 each, the new magazines did not come cheap, especially when most of the group members had eight or more magazines for each of their .45s. Although each group member was expected to acquire basic skills, specialization was encouraged. The theory was that each group member would develop a specialized skill, and then, as time permitted, cross train other members. Todd chose logistics as his specialty. T.K. chose personnel. Mary became medical officer, Mike Nelson chose explosives and demolitions, while his wife Lisa chose martial arts. With expertise on nearly every firearm, Dan Fong became the "unit armorer." Kevin Lendel held two specialties. The first was communications. The second was food storage and preparation. He chose the latter specialty because he had always loved cooking. Ken Layton was transportation coordinator, while his wife Terry volunteered to coordinate purchasing. During his brief membership, the already over trained Jeff Trasel declared himself "tactical coordinator" and group librarian. After he quit the group, Nelson replaced Trasel as tactical coordinator, while Kevin took over Jeff's responsibilities as librarian. Aside from guns and storage food, the group's other major investment was in vehicles. Before the Grays and Kevin Lendel moved to the Palouse hills, all of the group's members lived either in Chicago or the outlying suburbs. As most of their survival scenarios envisioned the need to "Get Out of Dodge" in a hurry, there was correspondingly strong emphasis placed on transportation. On this issue, the group deferred its judgment to Ken Layton. Layton convinced the group members to buy older American made cars and trucks and then fully restore and modify them. To Ken's way of thinking, new model cars and trucks were far too complex, broke down too easily, required specialized tools to work on, could only burn one grade of fuel, and were just too expensive. He also pointed out that late model cars are a conspicuous sign of wealth, and might serve as a target during periods of social unrest. He convinced the group members to buy either late 1960s or early 1970s Ford cars and trucks or Dodge Power Wagon pickups. His only stipulation was that they had "straight" bodies (never involved in a collision) and were free of rust. That meant that most of the members bought their cars and trucks from "rust free states" like California, Arizona, and New Mexico. They found them through Hemming's Auto News. Eventually, most of the group members complied with Ken's suggestion. The Grays bought a 1969 Power Wagon, but never got around to replacing Mary's 1971 VW Beetle. The Nelson's bought a 1968 Ford Bronco and a 1968 Ford Mustang, both of which used the same type of 289 engine. T.K. bought a 1969 Bronco, but kept his Plymouth Horizon for commuting. Kevin Lendel bought a 1971 Ford F 250 4-wheel drive pickup. While a member, Trasel bought a Power Wagon, his a 1970. Dan Fong, ever the non-conformist, replaced his 1981 Camaro with a 1990 Toyota 4x4 pickup. Ken and Terry Layton followed suit with the Nelson's approach and bought a 1968 Bronco and a 1967 Mustang, both with 302 cubic inch engines. One advantage of having Ken as a member of the group was the fact that he had access to a fully equipped automotive garage after normal working hours. Although he volunteered to do most of the restoration work himself, he insisted that each group member be there and assist him during the most important phases of the work. This way, Ken reasoned, every group member would know how their vehicles were put together, how they worked, and hopefully, how to handle most minor repairs. The vehicle restoration process that Ken insisted on turned out to be relatively expensive and time consuming. He started by pulling the engine and transmission from each vehicle, and then farming them out to other shops to be completely rebuilt. Next he would make minor body repairs, sand out the bodies, and put on a flat paint finish, usually in an earth tone. At roughly the same time, he would either re-build or replace the carburetor. Next, when the engine and transmission came back, he would re-install them, at the same time replacing all of their auxiliary equipment, aside from carburetors, with brand new components. This included radiators, starters, alternators, fuel pumps, water pumps, batteries, voltage regulators, starter solenoids, hoses, and belts. Next, Ken would rework the vehicle's suspension, usually modifying it for tougher off road use, and do an alignment and brake job, sometimes involving replacing the master cylinder. In most cases the vehicle's existing wiring harnesses did not need to be replaced. By the time he was done, Ken had in effect built a whole new vehicle that would be good for at least 10 years of strenuous use. After getting their vehicles back from Ken and recovering financially, most of the group members went on to further modify their vehicles to their own liking. Most of the four wheel drives were equipped with extra fuel tanks, beefier bumpers, and roll cages. Typically, most of the group members also added Bearcat police/weather scanners and Cobra single-sideband 40 channel citizen's band radios. It was Kevin that convinced the group to standardize with a more expensive single sideband (SSB) model. With the SSB feature, their C.B.s could be set to the full band, the upper sideband, or the lower sideband. This effectively made them 80 channel radios. SSB transmission was also more efficient, so it provides longer range transmissions. And, since SSB broadcasts are unintelligible when heard on the much more common standard AM C.B.s, it added a modest level of security. All of the group's communications equipment was standardized soon after the debate on standardizing weapons was settled. The primary communications system was in the form of the TRC-500 headset type 500 milliwatt walkie talkie. The "Trick Five Hundreds" as they were soon dubbed by the group members, turned out to be an ideal choice. They were inexpensive, reliable, and because they had a "hands free" voice operated (VOX) switch mode, they proved to be ideal for use on patrols. The only drawbacks to the TRC-500s were their limited range and that they were only available in one of two frequencies. Both of these frequencies were well known and subject to interception. This problem was solved by the electronic wizardry of Kevin Lendel. Through ads in the back of a ham radio magazine, Kevin was able to find a supplier who cut custom crystals. Kevin selected a frequency just below the 49.830 megahertz frequency of the group's TRC-500s. Realizing that what he was doing was not exactly legal, Kevin placed an order using an assumed name. He had them delivered to a commercial post office box company in downtown Chicago that didn't ask a lot of questions when one rented a box. When soldering in the custom crystals into all of the group member's TRC-500s, Kevin also took the time to seal all of the seams in the radio cases with RTV silicone sealant. This made them much more waterproof, and hence even more suitable to rough field use. At the advice of Jeff Trasel, the group also decided to buy several military field telephones. As Trasel so pointedly put it, "If you haven't got comm, you haven't got shit." The field telephones, connected by WD-1 two-conductor wire, would reduce the group's reliance on their radios in the immediate area of the retreat. The two models considered were the TA-312 and TA-1. The audio quality of the TA-312 was better than that of the TA-1, but it required the use of two D cell batteries. In contrast, the TA-1 was sound powered, and thus did not require batteries. Eventually, four TA-1s and almost a mile of WD-1 were bought as a "group purchase." Unlike most of the purchasing, which was done individually, a few items such as the field phones were bought for the benefit of the entire group. The cost of most group purchases was shared equally, some were "gifts to the group" on the part of individual members, and a few were paid for with unequal shares, based on the varying financial resources of the individual members. One optional but encouraged item of equipment for group members was a bullet proof vest. Mike Nelson recommended that each group member buy an extra heavy duty bullet proof vest of the variety worn by police SWAT teams. Mike recommended the Second Chance brand Hardcorps 3 model with extra ballistic inserts. Unlike the relatively thin vest that Mike wore on a day to day basis while on police duty, these extra heavy vests would stop virtually every type of pistol or shotgun projectile. With luck, they could even stop some rifle bullets. The vests were not a panacea. They could only stop a high powered rifle bullet if it stuck directly in the small trauma plate over the chest area. And they could do nothing, of course, to stop a head shot, groin shot, or disabling shot to a limb. However, the vests were better than nothing. Eventually, five of the relatively expensive vests were bought by the Grays, the Nelsons, and Tom Kennedy. Most of the other group members said that they planned to buy vests, but never got around to doing so. Another piece of ballistic protection that was recommended was a helmet. In the mid 1980s, the U.S. Army started issuing a helmet for its ground troops that was molded out of woven Kevlar, the same material used in modern bullet proof vests. The new helmets were immediately nicknamed "Fritz helmets" by soldiers, because they had a lip that extended below the wearer's ears, reminiscent of the steel helmets worn by German soldiers in both world wars. Like the vests, Kevlar helmets were expensive, so not all of the group members bought them. When they first came on the surplus market in the late 80s they cost $350 apiece. By 1996, the supply of surplus Kevlar helmets had increased to the point where their price on the civilian market dropped to roughly $100. Occasionally, they were found at gun shows or flea markets for even less. Very early on in the development of The Group, the issue of exactly what scenario they were preparing for was raised. Most members were thinking in terms of a economic collapse, followed by a general breakdown in law and order. Other leaned more towards nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare. Dan Fong insisted that the main emphasis should be on preparedness for resistance following a take over of the government by socialists, fascists, or communists. In the end it was decided that the group had best prepare for all conceivable scenarios, rather than just one. As Todd put it, "It would be kind of embarrassing to get ourselves all prepared for some big socioeconomic collapse, and then get nuked." o o o The only preparation that Todd's group made that they decided to keep an absolute secret was their purchase of blasting supplies and equipment. When Mike was doing research for his graduate work, it brought him into contact with a broad spectrum of loggers, farmers, and ranchers. One rancher that Mike met was Spence Loughran. Spence and his wife had a 640 acre spread 25 miles north of Moscow. Spence's ranch was used to both run cattle and harvest timber. When he first met him, Mike discovered that Spence was in the middle of a project blasting some stumps on his ranch. Mike mentioned to Spence that he had an interest in explosives, and offered to help out. They had a great time, as they both liked to "see things blow up." By the end of the day, they were great friends. When Mike bemoaned the fact that there was an "ocean of paperwork to wade through" in getting set up with an explosives permit in Illinois, Spence offered to add Mike to his blaster's permit, listing him as an "employee." Five weeks later Mike got a copy of the updated permit in the mail. During subsequent visits to Northern Idaho before the Crunch, first on hunting trips with Lisa, and later to help out Todd and Lisa with upgrading the retreat, Mike stopped by and visited with Spence and his wife. He also regularly went to do business with an explosives distributor in Spokane, Washington. With the permit supplied by Loughran, he was able to get everything that he needed. The first time at the distributor's shop, the owner was skeptical of Mike, as he had never met him before. Just to be sure, the owner called Loughran to check on his identity. Loughran told him, "Heck yeah, Bob, I sent him over there! Now just give him everything that I had him put on the list of what to buy." After hanging up the phone, the distributor cocked his head and said, "Well, you check out all-right. What can I get you?" Mike breathed a sigh of relief. On his first trip back to Idaho, Mike picked up a case of 75 percent dynamite and a reel of PETN detonating cord, often called primacord or simply "det. cord," and a pair of cap crimping pliers. On subsequent trips, Mike purchased electric and fuse type blasting caps, a small hand crank "blasting machine" generator for setting off electric blasting caps, 30 pounds of Composition 4 (C-4) plastic explosive, two additional cases of dynamite, a 20 pound roll of Dupont Detasheet C sheet explosive, and a copy of The Blaster's Handbook, which was crammed with safety information and useful tables. Eventually, all of these supplies were carefully transported from Mike and Lisa's to the retreat in Idaho. Mike gave the Grays specific instructions on storing the materials. The most important thing, he told them, was to store the caps and the bulk explosives at opposite ends of the basement. He said that as long as the basement stayed cool and dry, and the dynamite was up off the floor, there would be no problem with deterioration. One task that had to be done regularly was rotating the boxes of dynamite. Because Mike's dynamite was of the variety that had its nitroglycerin suspended in diatomaceous earth, it was much more stable than the older variety that had its nitroglycerin suspended in sawdust. However, there was still a risk that the nitroglycerin could settle and seep out of the casings of the individual sticks. To prevent this, it was simple enough to inspect a few of the sticks, and turn the cases upside down once every three months. So that they wouldn't lose track of this responsibility, Mary marked a circled red "R" for rotation day in her desk calendar at quarterly intervals. _________________________________________________________________ Still reading? Good! Did you send in your $5.00 yet? Please do! (Hey, it just takes a minute to drop an envelope in the mail.) Shareware only works if you make it work. Support the author's efforts by sending $5.00 cash or postal money order to James Wesley, Rawles, c/o P.O. Box 642, Penn Valley, California 95946, USA ON TO THE NEXT CHAPTER BACK TO THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS _________________________________________________________________ Triple Ought, Third Edition, "Without prejudice" per UCC 1-207 Publication Copyright ©1990, 1996 by James Wesley, Rawles (rawles@oro.net). All rights reserved. Web space provided by ammon@teleport.com. Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles _________________________________________________________________ Chapter 5 Squared Away "Man's mind is his basic tool of survival." - Ayn Rand Mary had Mike and Dan help her set up a bed for Rose next to the C.Q. desk. It seemed to be the logical location, since someone would be there to watch her condition around the clock. The only detractor was that everyone had to be especially quiet when they were in the front end of the house. Rose slept almost continuously for two days. Every four hours whoever was on C.Q. duty woke her to give her dose of ampicillin and offer her something to eat or drink. She refused anything but water for the first eighteen hours, then she started drinking some orange juice. At four A.M. on the third morning, Rose sat up in bed and asked for some pancakes. T.K., who had C.Q. duty at the time, stepped over to the kitchen and filled her request. She was working on her fourth pancake and gulping down her second