Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

39 INGRESS

Ken Layton and Kevin Lendel came to visit Joshua’s house on a Sunday afternoon in mid-September. Soon after he arrived, Ken had a question for Megan and Malorie. He asked, “I know that you two grew up speaking French. Do either of you know how to translate written French, like technical or military documents?”

Megan answered, “I assume this is about your NLR friends who are fighting the French forces up in Canada. Technical translation would be Malorie’s department. She is more fluent in French than I am, and she used to work part-time as a technical translator.”

Malorie nodded. “For translating technical things, yes, but military things might be a stretch since I don’t know anything about the French army, their order of battle, or their command and staff structure. After all of the fighting here, I know a lot more about the German and Belgian land forces than I do the French. Do you have the document that needs to be translated? I assume that it’s a captured document.”

Ken said, “A little more complicated than that. My resistance contact up in BC mentioned that they’re looking for a French translator on site with a small intelligence unit of some sort to translate captured French documents and military manuals.”

Malorie blinked. Her mind was racing. She asked, “Go there? So how soon do they need this translator?”

Ken answered, “Yesterday. Are you up for it?”

Malorie and Megan were transported to Todd and Mary Gray’s ranch in a captured Krauss-Maffei Wegmann light truck. Todd and most of his group were there to help. They had all brought some gear to donate. They already had Malorie’s gear and clothes spread across the floor of the living room. As she was segregating items into piles, Malorie asked, “So what does a girl pack for a trip like this?”

Kevin Lendel suggested sarcastically, “How about a stainless Walther PPK, a little sack of cut one-carat diamonds, some knockout drops, a couple of lipsticks, and a Gerber Mark II fighting knife?”

Ken groaned. “This isn’t a 007 trip. It’s more like going off to a university or going to work on some intense corporate research project—but, ah, you should be ready to rough it out in the boonies, just in case.”

Working together, they tore apart Malorie’s pack and dry bag, and then repacked them, now including many items donated from the occupants of both Kevin’s house and Todd’s house.

In the end, her load was heavy on cold-weather clothes and light on weaponry. The pack contained her M1 Carbine, eight spare loaded magazines (six of them were fifteen-rounders), a rifle-cleaning kit, two bandoleers of .30 carbine ammunition, a Cold Steel Voyager XL tanto pocketknife, a fairly complete outdoor survival kit with a waterproof match case and a magnesium fire starter, an olive-drab space blanket, two SureFire compact flashlights, some trioxane fuel bars, eleven MRE entrees, and several pairs of socks. There were lots of other practical items like a Bible, thirty-one dollars’ worth of 1950s and 1960s Canadian silver coinage, a pair of Yaktrax ice creepers, four legal pads, an assortment of pens, a pair of rubber-armored Hensoldt Wetzlar Dienstglas 8x30 binoculars (that Kevin had liberated from a captured German officer), a folding stereo viewer for analyzing aerial photos (also recently liberated), and an eight-by-ten-inch Fresnel lens page magnifier.

On short notice they were able to locate a copy of the Routledge French Technical Dictionary, per Malorie’s request. It was a gift to the resistance effort by a professor at Washington State University. Adding the dictionary to Malorie’s pack brought its weight to nearly thirty-five pounds. The dry bag held the overflow of cold-weather clothing and her sleeping bag. That was another twenty-two pounds.

While she was packing, Malorie mentioned that she considered it ironic that she—as a mechanic and millwright—would take on the responsibility of intelligence analysis, when it was her sister, Megan, who had the more formal training in the craft of intelligence. (All of Malorie’s intel experience had been OJT.) But she reasoned that the resistance mainly needed her skills as a linguist.

With the boys to raise, Megan’s place was clearly at home, but Malorie was willing and able to get involved.

Her weapon was the same M1 Carbine with a replica M1A1 paratrooper folding stock that she had carried since she left Virginia. She had realized from the beginning that it was an underpowered gun. However, it was compact, lightweight, and most important, she was confident and competent shooting it. Malorie was warned by fellow shooters that the carbine shot a pipsqueak pistol-class .30 caliber cartridge that was not a reliable man stopper. But at the time it was all that she could afford and find available from a private-party seller. (Her first choice had been a folding stock Kel-Tec SU-16B .223, but the only ones that she could find were being sold by licensed dealers—and she detested filling out Federal Form 4473s.)

Although she was offered the gift of an “only dropped once” AK-74 by Terry, Malorie thought that the stress of learning to handle, shoot, and field strip another rifle would be one stress too many to add to her already long list. (Her anxiety meter was already pegging, and her departure was in less than twenty-four hours.)

Megan assumed that seeing Malorie board the plane would be too stressful for Jean and Leo, so Malorie made her good-byes at the Gray ranch. Megan told the boys that “Auntie Malorie is going to work on a map board in Canada.” The sisters did their best to appear cheerful and upbeat. Later, Megan let Joshua know her concerns. “Mal is very important to me and the boys. I’ll be praying for her safety, several times a day.”

When Ken and Malorie arrived at the hangar in Jeff Trasel’s pickup, Jerry Hatcher was adjusting cargo tie-down straps and preflighting the plane. A year earlier, the underside of the plane had been spray-painted dark gray and the upper surfaces were painted a mottled green camouflage, giving it a very serious, warlike look. The oversize tires were specifically designed for rough field landings.

Jerry was a slender, balding man of just under average height. Ken and Malorie handed the backpack and dry bag to him. As they did, Ken said, “We were told that we needed to be precise about weight. Together, these weigh in at fifty-seven pounds.”

Jerry nodded and stowed Mal’s gear behind the passenger seat. (The rear passenger seats had been removed, and that area was already crowded with a row of ammo cans beneath duffel bags of various colors.) Jerry turned toward Mal, asking, “How much do you weigh?”

“About one twenty-two. Figure probably another five pounds for my clothes and boots, to be safe.”

Jerry punched some numbers into a JavaScript Weight and Balance calculator program on his iPad. The program was tailored specifically for the Cessna 180G model.

Mal looked interested in what he was doing, so Jerry explained the screen. “You see here that a 180G has fifty-five gallons of fuel capacity, which equates to three hundred thirty pounds. But tonight will be a short trip, so we are flying with just one hundred forty-five pounds of fuel. Here we’ve got weight, arm, and moment for each section of the aircraft. And this is the CG.”

Malorie said, “I understand center of gravity, but ‘arm’ and ‘moment’ are Greek to me.”

“It’s a little complicated and hard to explain. Moment—which is a measure of the tendency of a force to cause a body to rotate about an axis—is calculated by multiplying the weight of an object by its arm. The main thing for us to be concerned with is this little red crosshair in the fat red circle. If it goes outside of this green envelope grid, then we might fall out of the sky, which would not be good. As you can see, at two thousand five hundred forty-five, we are definitely pushing the envelope, since the maximum takeoff weight is two thousand five hundred fifty pounds. So I’ll plan on an extra-long takeoff roll. The weight also pushes our safe maneuvering speed up to one hundred and six miles per hour. With just me in the plane, that will drop to just ninety-six. The stall speed with the flaps extended is, of course, much lower.”

Malorie asked, “I’ve always wondered what ‘pushing the envelope’ meant. Now I know. Cool. And I’ll just skip on getting a grasp on arm and moment. So maneuvering speed is different than stall speed?”

“Yes, higher. But suffice it to say the heavier the plane is, the higher the stall speed, and the lighter the plane, the lower the stall speed. We’ll be staying above the stall speed, which is why we have to calculate where that is, especially during takeoff and landing. It will also vary depending on altitude, temperature, and humidity of the air. I won’t go into the difference it makes whether we are looking at true airspeed versus indicated airspeed for this explanation, but it also matters where the power levers are and how many g’s are on the aircraft. Confused? That’s why we have performance charts.”

Not noticing that Malorie’s eyes were glazing over, Jerry went on, pointing again at the screen. “Now that I’ve added in the weight of you and your gear, you can see we’re still just barely inside the envelope. We’ll drop down farther into the green once I burn off some of the fuel en route, as it will lower the weight and shift the CG in our favor. And of course my return trip will be ‘easy breezy.’”

Malorie nodded. They were scheduled to leave just after sunset.

Ken gave her a hug, and said, “Bon chance, and kick some UNPROFOR butt.”

As she was about to board the Cessna, Malorie balked for a moment. The enormity of what she was about to do struck her. She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “I’m just going to trust God’s providence on this.”

She stepped up into her seat quickly, but then fumbled with the unfamiliar seat belt arrangement.

Jerry noticed her nervousness and asked, “So, ahh, is this your first time in a light plane, or just your first time flying into occupied territory where you’ll face summary execution, if you’re captured?”

That broke the ice, and Malorie burst out laughing. She was still chuckling when she finally got the odd seat belt buckle latched.

Jerry said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through everything that I’m doing. Fact is, as a former instructor pilot, I have a tendency to talk to myself. I’ve flown this same route before, entirely on instruments, in much worse weather than this, and on softer fields. This is a very solid and trustworthy aircraft. It was built in 1964, but it’s been well maintained. As for me, my model year was 1968 and I’ve logged almost thirty-eight hundred hours of flying.”

Jerry put on a dark blue baseball cap with an Alaska Aces hockey team logo, showing a ferocious polar bear taking a swipe. He handed her a pair of pale green Clark headphones with a boom mike, and said, “You can put these on once I start the engine. Press this button here to talk. But don’t push that button, or you’ll be broadcasting on the radio. Not good, under the present circumstances.”

After strapping himself in, but before starting the engine, Jerry mounted his GPS receiver in its cradle and turned it on. He immediately dialed down the brightness of the color screen.

He explained, “This is my cheater. It’s a top-of-the-line Garmin Aera Model 795. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for it a year before the Schumer hit the fan. Now that the GPS ground stations are back online, the accuracy and full coverage of the GPS constellation has been restored, so we no longer have to fly by the seat of our pants. I’ve programmed in waypoints for our entire route—in three dimensions—plus four alternate exfiltration routes.”

He tapped the screen to give a different view and continued. “This thing is sweet. The most important thing is that it gives me pop-up alerts with plenty of warning, based on altitude and heading. Basically, it won’t let me screw up and fly into a mountain.”

Malorie laughed nervously. “That’s reassuring,” she said.

It was full dark when they took off, and they were across the Canadian border in just a few minutes.

Jerry punched the intercom button and said, “Ever since the Frogs grounded most private plane flights in Canada south of fifty-three degrees latitude, whenever someone hears a plane, people just assume that every plane they hear is a UNPROFOR flight.”

After a few minutes of maneuvering at full throttle, Jerry pulled the throttle rod back and adjusted the trim wheel.

Looking straight ahead and regularly glancing down at his instruments, he said, “Okay, the field ahead is a hay field that has had its final cutting of the season harvested and all of the bales have been hauled out. So that’s about as good a grass strip as you’re going to find anywhere. It is a one-hundred-sixty-acre field, so that’s plenty long. The nearest power line is a half mile east. To be covert, I’m going to delay turning on my landing lights until the last minute, but I’ll need them just to make sure there are no hay bales or a tractor sitting there. That could be a VBT.”

“What’s a VBT?”

“A Very Bad Thing.”

As he turned toward the field and lowered the plane’s flaps fully, he started speaking more quickly. “Airspeed eighty-five, three-fifty AGL. We’re looking good, lined up on final. Now, I don’t like to dawdle once I’m on the ground. I don’t plan to be down for more than about two minutes. I won’t be shutting the engine down, so whatever you do, do not walk forward of the wing, or you’ll get the proverbial mouthful of propeller. Once you see me unbuckle, you do the same, and jump out. You can help me unload everything. We’ll unload everything on your side of the aircraft. Then sit right down on the pile of gear and close your eyes tight, because when I throttle up to turn around, the prop wash is going to kick up a lot of dust. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Jerry made adjustments to his controls as he spoke, interspersing his description of instrument readings. “There are friendlies scheduled to be waiting. Airspeed seventy, about one-ten AGL. Looking good. If someone drives up with their headlights off, then relax, that’ll be your friendlies. Airspeed fifty-eight, sixty AGL. But if you see headlights, then grab your pack and beat feet for the nearest timber.”

“Okay.”

What happened next was a blur. She felt the plane bounce and then touch down solidly. Jerry pulled back the throttle sharply, and he visibly braced his shoulders back against his seat as he stood on the brake pedals. The plane slowed very rapidly. Even before it came to a full stop, he turned off his landing lights. They were out of their doors quickly and Jerry ran behind the tail and joined Mal, who was already unloading gear. Even idling, the prop wash was strong. It felt like standing in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour wind. The pile of gear grew rapidly, ten feet to the right of Malorie’s door. Then Jerry shouted, with a wave: “Last one. God bless you!”

Jerry ran around behind the tail again and jumped back in the plane. He throttled the plane up in a roar, executed a tight 180-degree turn, and took off, this time with no landing lights. Suddenly it was quiet, except for a dog barking in the distance. The air felt chilly. Malorie pulled her backpack out of the pile and opened its top flap. She snaked out the carbine and laid it across her knees. After refastening the pack’s top flap, she reached into a cargo pocket of her pants and pulled out a fifteen-round magazine for her carbine. She slapped it in place, gave the magazine a tug to ensure that it was latched, and then chambered a round. The clank of the slide operating seemed uncomfortably loud. She reached down to confirm that the gun’s rotary safety was pointed down to the six-o’clock position. She waited. Only then did she notice that her hands were shaking. A few moments later, Malorie could hear a vehicle approaching. She was relieved to see that its headlights were off.

Malorie was sitting at the kitchen table of a farmhouse. A woman with graying wavy hair and a face ravaged by too many years in the sun sat across from her.

The woman said, “I can get you up there, and I can arrange to smuggle that carbine there, but I don’t think I can necessarily get both you and it there at exactly the same time.”

“Are you worried about checkpoints?”

The woman nodded. “Yes. There’ll be several of them. They don’t ask for ID except for whoever is driving, but they often search vehicles. We’ll have to send that gun and all the ammo, and any other items that might be hard to explain, via the courier network.”

Malorie nodded and her host continued, “It’s ten hours of driving. At the checkpoints, all you have to do is lay on the charm, and chat them up a bit in French. They love to hear anyone out west who speaks fluent French, and they always assume that French speakers are Ménard loyalists. Just don’t overdo it on the charm, or they’ll start thinking of you as a potential date rape.”

“Oh, great.”

The woman glanced at her wristwatch and carried on. “Our cover will be that we are midwives, driving a long distance to attend a twin birth.”

“So how do we carry that off?”

“I really am a midwife, so I can answer all of their questions, and I’ll have all my usual home delivery kit with me. I’ve learned to say in rudimentary French, ‘Je suis une sage-femme’ and ‘Je suis pressé.’ Saying I’m a midwife and that I’m in a hurry usually does the trick.”

“And what if they question me?”

“You’re an apprentice midwife, so you won’t be expected to know a lot. Right?”

They were stopped at seven checkpoints between Wynndel and Williams Lake, and their car was searched at two of them. At the checkpoint near Kamloops, one of the military policemen mentioned that Malorie’s olive-green Kelty backpack looked “too military.” He began unpacking it, methodically building a pile of clothes from the pack on the trunk lid of the car.

Malorie had stood silently, smiling. She now laughed disarmingly, and asked in perfect French: “And my panties? Do they also look too military?’

The soldier blushed and said, “Donc, vous parlez français!”

“Of course. As every good loyalist should.”

The soldier began repacking the clothes, looking embarrassed.

After they had driven well past the roadblock, the midwife began laughing.

Malorie kept giggling for several more minutes.

It was Claire McGregor who was waiting to meet Malorie at the Hudson’s Bay Company store parking lot. Switching Malorie’s pack and dry bag between car trunks took just a minute. The midwife left with a wave.

“How was your drive, Miss LaCroix?”

“Gorgeous scenery. It was just stunning. Lots of elk, and there were bighorn sheep. I’d never seen those in person before.”

“Any problem with the internal security checks?”

She turned to Claire, put on a smile, fluttered her eyelids, and said, “Pas de problème.”

Claire laughed and replied, “Feminine wiles beat brute force every time.” They talked nonstop all the way to the ranch. Claire reminded Malorie of her aunt Helen. Very soon, Malorie knew that she would feel comfortable at Claire’s ranch house.