Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 3 Ready and Able

Less than an hour after the second debriefing 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, with everyone bumping into each other. Todd was shouting, “Hold on! hold on! We can’t all man the front windows! Kevin, watch the back! Dan, west side!” 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 muttered, adjusting the focus wheel. “Well, I’ll be! The old super-warrior came for a visit. You can relax, everyone. 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 answered, “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 landline ASAP. Tell her we have 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-heating 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 had entered just below her collarbone. 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 two inches in diameter.

“What happened?” Mary asked, as she was digging through a large box of sterilized medical instruments that were individually wrapped in Ziploc bags.

“We were on our way up here. We stopped because Rose said that she had to pee. She 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 was I supposed to do? I was thinking we were history.

“The next thing I knew, the guy with the 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 turns his back and 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 Bucklite 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 told him, ‘No, you drop your gun, you half-wit, 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 IQ, 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 backpedaling. 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 Colt .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—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 pronounced, “She’s pretty well out. Her pulse is rapid at 115, but her BP is a bit on the weak side—110 over 40. That may sound strange, but I’ve heard that that isn’t unusual in cases where someone has lost a lot of blood.”

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 stockpot 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.

Mary prepped Rose’s arm. Jeff helped her hang a colloid IV bottle from the light fixture above the dining room table. She left the roller clamp on the IV tube in the wide-open position, providing a rapid drip.

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 there 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 Luer lock. You can even set up a piece of tubing with needles at both ends for a direct transfusion if absolutely necessary.” He instructed that it was generally better to collect blood for transfusion, rather than making a direct transfusion.

“There is too much risk of losing track of how much is coming out of the donor if you don’t take out measured units. Donors have gone into shock and died from giving too much blood in direct transfusions. It happens a lot in Third World countries where they do direct transfusions.”

Soon after her conversation with the surgeon, Mary added six disposable sets of transfusion rigs to her mini-surgical kit. Although she had long hence memorized blood type compatabilities, for everyone else’s benefit, she typed up “cheat cards.” The rules were generally accepted for packed red blood cells from blood banks, but could be used for freshly donated blood in an emergency. She photocopied and laminated them, and put them in each transfusion kit. They read:

Mary taught a class to the group members on basic transfusion techniques. 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. had their arms prepped to give transfusions. T.K. was the group’s only type-O negative universal donor. Dan was positioned on the couch. Mary then loosened the catheter cap and inserted the end of the tubing to start the flow of blood down to an empty bladder pack on the floor. By that time, the IV that was connected to Rose was nearly empty, so Mary replaced it.

She said tersely, “I’m going to put another unit into her, again at a rapid drip, while we are drawing Dan’s blood.” Mary continued to check on Rose’s vital signs in the next few minutes while Dan was giving his first unit. She noticed that Rose was drifting in and out of consciousness. Soon, Dan’s first donor bag was full. She waited until the second bag of colloids was nearly empty, and replaced it with the unit from Dan.

Then she dashed across to Dan and started to fill a second bladder pack.

“Let me know if you start to feel dizzy at all, Dan. We’ll be drawing you down this second unit.” Next, Mary prepared a heavy dose of Ketalar, a disassociative general anesthetic. The dosage was based on a table included with each bottle.

She adjusted the dose based on Rose’s body weight of 120 pounds, and her already semiconscious state. She judged that with this dose Rose would be fully unconscious 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 just below the unit of Dan’s blood.

After about fifteen minutes, Mary cut off the supply of blood from Dan, and had T.K. take Dan’s place on the couch. She slowed the rate of flow from the unit of Dan’s blood to Rose, using the roller clamp, explaining, “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.”

Washing her hands once again, Mary donned a surgical mask and a pair of sterile gloves. The mask wasn’t necessary, but since she had them handy, she used one. “Ninety-nine percent of the risk of infection comes from my hands and the instruments. But it doesn’t hurt to add a bit of insurance with a mask.”

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., 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. It’s 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 number four 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. Supposedly a fairly safe bet with arteries this small. The Good Lord was prescient and provided a dual supply to most areas of our bodies. Some of the smaller veins and arteries can be sacrificed and there is still a supply. You can’t do that with anything major like the femoral or sub-clavian arteries, but it is allowable with the smaller ones.”

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 groaned. “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, resuming the flow of blood. By now, Lisa had replaced the second bladder of blood from Dan with the first one from Kevin, tapping on the tube with her fingers repeatedly to force some air bubbles in the tube up to the expansion chamber. After a couple of more minutes of probing around, Mary asked, “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 replied, “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 miniature version of a machinist’s flat file.”

Dan then offered 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 stockpot. Dan handed her the file using the forceps. Mary nodded and enunciated, “This should do the trick.” She shook the file in the air to help cool it. 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.

Meanwhile, Lisa finished taking the second unit of blood from Kevin, and capped his catheter, taping it securely in place.

Seeing this, Mary half-shouted, “Both T.K. 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. Let’s leave them prepped, in case they have to donate again. If absolutely necessary, they could each probably give another half unit tomorrow, if they take it easy. Let’s pray that Rose doesn’t start bleeding again.”

Next, Mary opened a bottle of saline and soaked several small rolls of gauze.

She looked up at Lisa, who was standing by her side, and declared, “I’m going to leave this wound open for the next few days. I’ll just pack it with this damp gauze. It would be a mistake to stitch her up prematurely. At this point drainage is much more important. We’ll watch her wound closely the next few days. I expect in a few days we’ll close the entrance side and a day later, the exit side, but even then I’ll probably want to leave a drainage tube in. Final closure won’t be done for about a week.”

Only when Mary glanced up at the clock did she realize that nearly three hours had gone by since she had started scrubbing up. After checking Rose’s vital signs once again, she said resolutely, “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 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.

The first addition to the group after it was started by Todd and T.K. 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 immediately started working full time 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 $58,000 a year. By 2009, Ken was earning $98,000 a year as the assistant manager of a shop specializing in off-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 had 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 Musashi’s A Book of Five Rings. He soon struck up a conversation with her about martial arts. For Mike, it was love at first sight.

Lisa was a graphic design major with interests that ranged from backpacking to tae kwon do, to sport parachuting. Lisa was of average height, with dark brown hair and unusually heavy eyebrows. She joined the group a few months after she and Mike began dating. Lisa was a talented airbrush artist. Over several years, she painted camouflage patterns on most of the group members’ long guns, to match their camouflage uniforms. She put three coats of clear flat lacquer over the camouflage paint, to keep it from chipping or wearing off. Initially, Lisa approached the group as just another one of her many hobbies. Later, it became an all-consuming passion that overwhelmed most of 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 BadYears 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 “microclimate 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 reported, “Idaho is big-time survival country. Half the population is composed of survivalists that don’t even realize that they are survivalists. Self-sufficiency is just their native way of life up there. They definitely have the survival mind-set. Almost everybody hunts. A lot of people use woodstoves and they cut their own wood.

Most people do home canning, and a lot of families are set up with their own reloading presses. Lots of them homeschool their kids. Home birth with mid-wives is popular, and a lot of families do what they call ‘home churching’—small congregations of one to four families, meeting at home. 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 him 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 black 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 influenced the Group in a number of subtle ways. Most importantly, his cautious, well-considered approach to conversations and life in general tended to “ground” the group. He often said things like, “Hold on, let’s not be hasty” at group meetings, and even in the field during training exercises, and in planning patrols. Another influence he had was on the importance of quality knives and sharpening stones. His saber fencing experience made him “edged weapons conscious.”With his guidance, each of the group members eventually bought two or three skinning knives each, as well as a defensive knife.

Kevin taught several classes on knife fighting, and one on saber fencing.

The latter was more or less for fun. Kevin also individually taught each member the art of putting a fine edge on a knife with a soft Arkansas stone. For skinning knives, most of the members bought standard mass-produced Case and Buck knives, but a few opted for custom knives made by Andy Sarcinella, TrinitY Knives, and Ruana. Most of them also bought a Leatherman tool and a CRKT folding knife. For fighting knives, most purchased standard factory produced knives made by Benchmade or Cold Steel. Kevin bought an expensive New Lile Gray Ghost with Micarta grip panels.

Against Kevin’s advice, Dan Fong bought a double-edged Sykes-Fairbairn British commando knife. Kevin warned him that it was an inferior design. He preferred knives that could be used for both utility purposes and for combat.

He observed that the Fairbairn’s grip was too small, and that the knife’s slowly tapering tip was too likely to break, particularly in utility use. Dan eventually wrapped the knife’s handle with green parachute cord to give it a more proper diameter. Because the Fairbairn did indeed have a brittle tip, Dan did most of his utility knife work with a CRKT folder with a tanto-type point.

Kevin Lendel was very quiet at most of the group meetings. Typically, he had his nose in a book during most of the meetings that were dominated by discussion. This unnerved the others until they realized that Kevin was not missing a word being uttered. 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 SOPs. 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 2007 as a junior programmer with a salary of $85,500. By 2009, he was the senior systems analyst, and made $122,000.

In 2002, 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 for 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 withY-Dyne, and he started working entirely at home, using a Sun Microsystems Sparc-20 workstation—which was loaned to him by Y-Dyne—and two computers of his own: a Macintosh tower, and a hybrid IBM clone later upgraded with a 2-GHz processor.

Many of Lendel’s contracts came from outside of the Chicago area. He generally sent his software using a modem, since Bovill was not in a DSL service area, and it was just beyond range for the local wireless broadband service. Occasionally, he would send the programs on Zip 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. They couldn’t get along without him.

Although he did not make quite as much money as he had withY-Dyne, Kevin enjoyed the escape from the mindless process of daily 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. He often worked as late as two or three a.m., and slept 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 Grays’ farm almost immediately.

Kevin soon 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, adjoining farms had been owned by the same families for two or more generations. The fourth adjoining parcel, to the east, was a full section 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 than 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 twenty-six 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 forty feet in height. Kevin would have preferred more land, since he eventually planned to pasture cattle, 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 twenty-two years old when he and T.K. first formed the group. He was six-foot-two with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He stayed slim, never letting his weight get over 185 pounds. By the time Todd entered college, his father was ready to retire. The owner of three hardware stores in the Chicago area, Phil Gray had amassed the magical million-dollar figure, and decided that he should slow down and take life easy. Just a year 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 six 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 just after the turn of the century.

Todd graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in economics. Soon after gradua-tion, he landed a position with Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan, a major accounting firm with branches in metro areas 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, “Naaaw, admit it. You like her ’cause she’s a total babe.”

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 getting his Master’s degree in business administration.

Kennedy was the youngest son of a retired Air Force pilot. Upon retiring as a full colonel after thirty-two years of service, T.K.’s father took up calligraphy as a retirement hobby. This eventually developed into a second career, occupying at least twenty 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 2008 of a heart attack. His mother died a year later, of leukemia.

His half-Spanish ancestry gave Tom black hair, a medium complexion, and piercing dark brown eyes. Because T.K. had been born prematurely, he only reached a height of five-feet-four. 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 2002, after a stint at the Sears corporate headquarters in Hoffmann Estates, 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 altar 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, fifteen spare strings, and a spare bow limb. At a group meeting in early 2008, 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, Dan. 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 than 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, it is 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, $4,800 on buying and restoring a 1969 Dodge Power Wagon pickup, and $1,800 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 2008, 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 burnout.” His boss was upset when he heard Todd use the term “burnout,” as it had precipitated the loss of several good accountants in recent years.

Even though Bolton, Meyer, and Sloan was an “old school” accounting firm, Todd’s boss was able to push 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 1.8 GHz IBM clone with a twenty-gigabyte hard disk and dial-up 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 were told about his increased productivity, they gave him both the raise and the go-ahead to start working from home full-time. He 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 Dark 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 asked, “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. Fong was frequently criticized by the other group members for 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. His only extravagance at dinnertime was premium beer. He had a taste for Anchor Steam, Samuel Adams, and ales from various Midwest micro-breweries. 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. He attributed his rounded belly to beer rather than overeating.

Fong’s gun collection changed drastically after he joined the group. It never numbered less than twenty guns, however. When he first joined the group, his collection consisted primarily of target rifles, big game hunting rifles, and black powder muzzleloaders. Later, the composition of his collection had shifted more toward the paramilitary, but was still exotic.

Among others, Dan owned a Belgian FN/FAL assault rifle, an early 1960s Portuguese contract version of the Armalite AR-10 (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 9 mm pistol, two Browning Hi-Power 9 mm pistols, including one with a tangent rear sight and shoulder stock, a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver, a Winchester Model 1897 twelve-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 twenty-five, Jeff was lingering in junior college for the fourth year. He 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 2002, he had a hard time readjusting 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 with Blackwater or one of the other “contractors.” But the choice jobs in Iraq went to soldiers who had served two or more tours in

“The Big Sandbox.”A quirk of fate had kept Jeff out of the Middle East. Thus, there were no prospects for “merk work” for him aside from the Légion Etrangère—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 contented 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, two-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 bimonthly 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: That’s 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 to 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 the northern Michigan peninsula. The standing rule was, “If we are carrying guns, no camouflage clothing, but if we are unarmed, camo uniforms 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 annoyances were 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 2006, 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 Nelsons’ apartment.

With the exception of Trasel, the original group was still intact when the Grays activated their retreat in Idaho during the stock market crash. After so many 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.