Phoenix Rising

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dale County Truck Rental, Ozark, Alabama—Thursday, May 17

“You do realize that all I want to do is rent this truck, don’t you? I’m not trying to buy it,” Clay said to the proprietor. “And it is a local move, I’m not going anywhere with it.”

“You’ll have it back today?”

“I’ll have it back by six tonight.”

“Fifteen hundred dollars. And the gas tank had better be topped off.”

“All right. You’re robbing me blind, but I have to have a truck today.”

“You got a beef, Sergeant Major, take it up with President Ohmshidi. It’s his dumbass policies that have gotten us into this mess.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t argue with you there,” Clay said. “That sonofabitch has been a disaster.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me you hated Ohmshidi as much as I do? Tell you what. I’ll take two hundred fifty dollars off. You can have the truck for twelve hundred and fifty.”

“Thank you,” Clay said.

When Clay drove through the Ozark Gate he was stopped by the MP.

“You’ll have to get a visitor’s pass for that truck,” the MP said. “And I’ll need to put down where you are going.”

“I’m moving out of my quarters,” Clay replied.

The MP entered the destination into his log, then handed Clay a visitor’s pass with instructions to put it on the dash so it could be seen through the windshield. From there he drove to the POL center.

“I don’t know, Sergeant Major,” a specialist said. “I don’t feel right about loading military fuel into the back of a civilian truck.”

“What difference does it make what kind of truck you load it in?” Clay asked. “I have an authorized and approved requisition document.”

“Maybe I should call Captain Gooding and ask him what I should do.”

“Go ahead and call him if you want to. His name is right here on the requisition form,” Clay said.

“I just don’t feel right about putting the fuel onto a civilian truck,” the specialist said.

“What would make you feel right about it?”

“Well, I mean, when you figure how much gasoline costs right now . . . I’ve got a leave coming up, but I can’t go home because I can’t afford the gas.”

“How many gallons would it take you to get home?”

“About forty gallons.”

“So, what if you had enough fuel to get home, plus say, oh, about fifteen gallons more so you could run around a bit when you got home?”

“That would be fifty-five gallons,” the specialist said.

“Interesting coincidence, isn’t it, that you need fifty-five gallons of gasoline, and that is exactly the amount that is in one of these barrels?”

“Yes,” the specialist said. “Very interesting.”

“So, are you going to help me to get my nineteen barrels loaded onto this truck or what?”

“Nineteen barrels?”

“Nineteen,” Clay said.

The specialist smiled. “They are on pallets, five to a pallet. I’ll get a forklift.”

Clay pushed one of the barrels off one of the pallets. “Only four on this one.”

“We’d better hurry,” the specialist said, going toward the forklift.

Stagefield TAC-X

There are thirteen stagefields located around Fort Rucker. A stagefield is a facility that is somewhat remote from the main base, allowing student pilots to conduct flight and tactical operations there. TAC-X, or tactical operations training field X, was one of the thirteen, and though many Army aviators had trained here, it was no longer in operation.

When Clay approached the entrance to the stagefield, he saw that a double chain-link gate blocked the road. The gate was locked by process of a chain and padlock. A sign on the gate read:

U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED!

Clay got out of the truck and, using a pair of bolt cutters, cut the lock. A moment later he swung the gates open and drove the truck through. Stopping the truck, he got out and closed the gates behind him, passed the chain back through, and reset the lock so that it looked as if it was still secure. Then he drove to the largest of the four buildings, this one a hangar, and went through the same process of cutting that lock and swinging open the hangar door.

Something scurried past his legs, startling him, and he let out a little shout until he realized that it was nothing more than a raccoon. He backed the truck into the hangar, then rolled the barrels down the tail ramp. It took less than an hour to off-load every barrel of gasoline, roll them over into the corner, and set them upright. When every barrel was off-loaded he covered them with an old tarpaulin. With the tarp in place, he went around picking up trash from the hangar, a solvent bucket, some paint cans, an old oil pan, a couple of wooden boxes, and some Plexiglas and sheet metal, which he placed on top of the tarp. His crowning achievement was finding six empty barrels, which he placed in front of his handiwork.

He examined the area when he was finished. Even if someone came into the hangar and looked around, they would have no idea that there was a little over one thousand gallons of gasoline here.

Clay closed the hangar doors, then locked them shut with his own padlock. Leaving stagefield TAC-X he did the same thing at the front gate, replacing the old lock with one of his own.

As he drove back to Ozark to turn in the truck, he called his daughter, who was a student about to graduate from Northwestern Louisiana University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Although Clay had helped out as much as he could, she had held up her end by working as a waitress.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Jenna. This is your dad.”

“Hi, Daddy. I hope you are calling to tell me you can come to my graduation.”

“Darlin’, there’s nothing I’d like more,” Clay said. “But with the cost of fuel now—that is, when you can even get fuel—I just don’t think I’ll be able to. You can thank your president for that.”

“I know you don’t like him,” Jenna said. “But that’s because you haven’t given him a chance. He is trying to do some things to make a real difference in the world.”

“Yeah, like bringing all transportation to a halt.”

“You aren’t being fair. Mom and I are going to a pro-Ohmshidi rally tonight.”

“Your mother still trying to save the world, is she?” Clay asked.

“Daddy, be fair. Just because you are a dinosaur doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate what Mom is trying to do.”

Clay chuckled. “I will confess that your mother never met a cause she didn’t support, or a movement she didn’t join.”

“And you never met a war you didn’t love.”

“I don’t love war, darlin’.”

“That would be hard to prove by me. You went to Iraq under the first President Bush, you went to Bosnia for Clinton, then two more times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan for the second President Bush. And you got medals for every one of them.”

Clay lowered the phone from his ear and drummed his fingers on the dashboard for a moment. Why did Jenna have to sound exactly like her mother? Fortunately, she also looked like Carol, who was a beautiful woman.

“Daddy? Daddy, are you still there?”

Jenna’s voice was tinny over the phone, and Clay raised it back to his ear. “I’m still here, darlin’, but the traffic is getting a little heavier so I had better hang up. I’m very proud of you for graduating. And I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you too, Daddy. I just wish that you were a little more open-minded about things.”

“Tell your mama I said hi,” Clay said. “Bye.”

“I will. Bye, Daddy.”

Clay punched out of the call then dropped the phone back into his shirt pocket.

He thought of Carol, whose background was everything his wasn’t. Whereas Clay’s father was a Vietnam war veteran, Carol’s mother had been a hippie, caught up in the free-spirit anti-war crowd. Carol, who was born in San Francisco, had no idea who her father was but, as she often assured Clay, she at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he was not a warrior.

There had been sparks between them from the moment they met, but underneath those sparks, or perhaps causing them, there was a very strong sexual attraction. In the end, though, the sexual attraction was not enough to save their marriage, and when Clay deployed to Iraq the second time, this time under George W. Bush, Carol left to protest that same war. In doing this, she was taking up where her mother had left off a generation earlier.

World Cable News—Thursday, May 10

In Washington today, Congress passed by acclamation President Ohmshidi’s Water Resources Act, a comprehensive law that gives the federal government absolute control over all coastal waters, bays, rivers, lakes—whether natural or man-made—springs, creeks, canals, drainage ditches, and ponds. Under the auspices of this act those bodies of water that now lie on private land will be confiscated, and their use for any reason, whether watering livestock, fishing, boating, or drinking water, will be subject to federal government approval and taxation.

Congressman Hugh Langston of Alabama, who had led the fight against the Water Resources Act, protested the acclamation, claiming that the count was too close for a voice vote. Speaker of the House Nina Percy had Congressman Langston removed from the House floor.

In other news, the National Chamber of Commerce estimates that the amount of money taken from the U.S. economy as a result of the petroleum freeze, by virtue of lost revenue from the shortage of goods and services, as well as lost income from jobs that have been eliminated, to be in excess of five trillion dollars.

Despite severe rationing, and the steadily increasing cost of gasoline, our nation’s supply of fuel has already reached the critical stage. Analysts are particularly concerned about those in the north who heat their homes with petroleum. If the winter is very severe, there will be extreme hardship throughout the Northeast.