Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

20. Tentacles

Maynard Hutchings and his council that headed the Provisional Government soon consolidated their power in Kentucky and much of Tennessee, declaring themselves “The Sole and Legitimate Provisional Government of the United States of America and Possessions,” with Hutchings himself voted by his council as “president pro tempore.”

The Provisional Government spread its sphere of influence rapidly. Any towns that resisted were quickly crushed. The mere sight of dozens of tanks and APCs was enough to make most townspeople cower in fear. Anything that the ProvGov couldn’t accomplish through intimidation, it accomplished with bribes. A new currency was spread around lavishly among the Hutchings cronies. Covertly, some criminal gangs were hired as security contractors and used as enforcers of the administration’s nationalization schemes. Some of these gangs were given military vehicles and weapons and promised booty derived from eliminating other gangs that were not as cooperative. Hit squads were formed to stifle any dissent. These did so through abductions, arson, and murder. Nobody was ever able to prove a link, but an inordinately large number of conservative members of Congress from the old government disappeared or were reported killed by bandits.

Some foreign troops were clothed in U.S. ACU digital or OCP camouflage. But most foreign troops stayed in their own uniforms and were used as shock troops, to eliminate any pockets of resistance. Disaffection with the new government smoldered everywhere that they went to pacify.

Within the first three months of launching the new government, Hutchings was in contact via satellite with the UN’s new headquarters in Brussels to request peacekeeping assistance. (The old UN building in New York had been burned, and the entire New York metropolitan region was nine-tenths depopulated and controlled by hostile gangs.) Hutchings had at first naively assumed that the UN’s assistance would be altruistic, with no strings attached. It was only after the first UN troops started to arrive in large numbers that it became clear that UN officers would control the operation. Eventually, Hutchings became little more than a figurehead. The real power in the country was held by the UN administrators. They had their own chain of command that bypassed the Hutchings administration, and they had direct control over the military.

One closely guarded secret was that Maynard Hutchings signed an agreement that promised payment of thirty metric tons of gold from the Fort Knox depository to defray the costs of transporting and maintaining a mixed contingent of UN peacekeepers, mostly from Germany, Holland, and Belgium. The gold was shuttled out of the country in half-ton increments in flights from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. There had also been the offer of Chinese peacekeeping troops, but Hutchings insisted that no Asian or African troops be used on American soil, saying, “I want it to be all white fellas that’ll blend in.”

In early December, Lars Laine made an appointment to meet with L. Roy Martin at his office. Although Laine’s daily “uniform” around the ranch was a pair of khaki pants and a digital ACU shirt-his best bet to blend in, given the predominant local sagebrush over sandy soil-he decided to brush his tan leather combat boots and wear his full ACU uniform. He even “de-sterilized” it, slapping on a Velcro flag on the shoulder, a subdued oak leaf on the center of his chest, and a “LAINE” nametape. Beth suggested that he wear his tan eye patch, saying, “It’s better you look rugged, rather than him spending the whole time eyeballing your glass eye.” Only Beth could say something like that to Lars without him feeling the least offended. She always knew what to wear to a party.

As Lars drove back from shopping, he passed a group of men who were constructing a reinforced fighting position beside the road on a low hill, about halfway between Farmington and Bloomfield. It was obviously part of the sheriff’s posse work on Bloomfield roadblocks that he had heard about. They observed his passing vehicle suspiciously, and two of them stepped toward their rifles until they saw the license plate prefix.

Lars drove up to the refinery’s gates and was not surprised to see that they were closed and manned by a pair of guards armed with both M1A rifles and holstered pistols. One of them had a clipboard. Lars rolled down his window and announced, “Major Lars Laine. I have an appointment with Mr. Martin.”

Lars was asked for his ID, and the guard took twenty seconds to closely examine it, comparing it with the notes on his clipboard. This obviously was not just a perfunctory “Wave them through” sort of stop. As the guard was looking at Laine’s driver’s license and military ID card, Lars sized up the guard: He was in his early thirties and had a buzz cut. He had the bearing of an Army or Marine Corps veteran. He wore unmarked ACUs, desert boots, IBA, and slightly scratched Oakley sunglasses and a tan baseball cap, for the full-on Special Forces “operator” look. And just as he was being handed back his ID cards, Lars noticed a woven texture on the back of the well-worn clipboard. It was one of the “executive protection” Kevlar clipboards that he had seen in Iraq. Clearly, these guys were not your everyday rent-a-cops.

The guard whispered a code phrase on a handie-talkie, and ten seconds later the electric gate opened. Lars drove up to the plant’s administrative office, a nondescript windowless concrete slab tilt-up building that looked recently constructed. He stepped out of the cab and slung his Valmet across his back.

To Lars, the building looked normal except that he could see a parapet of sandbags at one corner of the roof. And then as he approached the building he noticed the front door, which had probably originally been glass, had been replaced with what appeared to be plywood, painted dark gray to match the building.

A neatly printed sign with an arrow read, “Press buzzer and identify yourself. Door is heavy: Pull hard!” Lars pressed the button and looked up at a CCTV camera. “Major Lars Laine.” A moment later a buzzer sounded and Laine pulled the door open. It was indeed very heavy. As he swung it open, he could see that the plywood was just a veneer, covering an unpainted sheet of half-inch-thick plate steel. After he stepped through, the spring-loaded door automatically closed behind him with a click. Laine turned to see that there was a green indicator light shining above the door and that there were heavy metal brackets installed to manually bar the door. He turned forward again to see that he was in a narrow passageway just over three feet wide and nine feet long, with a cinder-block wall on one side, the building’s slab outer wall on the other side, and tongue-and-groove eight-inch planks sheeted above. At the end of the hallway was another door, also steel, this one unpainted, and he was again under the lens of a CCTV camera. He heard the inner door being unbarred. After a pause, a woman’s voice on the intercom announced, “You may proceed.”

Pushing open the inner door, which seemed even heavier-it looked like three-quarter-inch plate steel-Lars came into an entry foyer. A trim woman in her thirties with a stubby “breaching” riot shotgun slung at her side greeted him, “Good morning, sir, Mr. Martin is ready to see you. Follow me.” She walked him past mainly empty desks to the far end of the building. Lisbeth would have been happy to see that Lars was giving attention to the secretary’s Remington riot gun and not her rear end.

As Laine was ushered into Martin’s office, he was taken aback to see that instead of a paneled executive office, it appeared to be a converted storage room, with no decorations. Martin had a round face and a middle-age paunch. He wore suit pants, a polo shirt, and small Giorgio Armani wire-framed eyeglasses. Martin had what Lars called a desk jockey physique.

Martin was seated behind an odd square desk that was constructed a bit like a church pulpit, with slab sides that went all the way to the floor. A Kenwood multiband transceiver and a police scanner sat stacked on one corner of the desk. Their antenna co-ax cables went straight up to the ceiling, adding to the utilitarian look of the office.

“Take a seat,” Martin said, with a wave.

As he did, resting the Valmet across his thighs, Laine realized that the desk where Martin sat was probably constructed out of plate steel and just covered with wood for show.

Martin began, “I’ve heard some good things about you.”

“Likewise. And I’m impressed with your security around here.”

“You were in the Army?”

“Yeah, I was branched Civil Affairs. I got out as an O-4.”

Martin responded, “I heard that was becoming its own branch just as I was leaving the Army. Times change.”

“Yeah, Iraq and Afghanistan changed a lot of things for the Army. ‘Low Intensity Conflict,’ ‘Nation Building,’ all that.”

Recognizing the distinctive “cheese grater” black fore end on Laine’s rifle, Martin intoned, “That’s a Valmet, isn’t it?”

“You sure know your guns. Yes, it’s a Valmet. It belonged to my father. Before he passed away, he collected guns from Finland, since he was Finnish.”

“But I thought your family name was English?”

“Lane, without the i is English, but Laine with the i is fairly common for folks of Finnish descent.”

“Oh, I see.” After an awkward pause, L. Roy asked, “Can you sum up your military experience?”

“I did three tours: one in Afghanistan, and two in Iraq. I spent a lot of time outside the wire. Civil Affairs officers mainly do host country liaison. That got dicey at times. I was an IPI liaison. That stands for ‘indigenous populations and institutions.’ I picked up a bit of Pashto and a conversational level of Arabic. I was nearly done with my third tour when I got this present, courtesy of some jihadi othek who was given some electronics goodies by the Iranians.” Laine raised his prosthetic hand and rotated it at the wrist. “So I hear that you want to set up roadblocks, like the ones they’re building around Farmington.”

“That’s right. But I’m getting some resistance from the Bloomfield City Council. They think I’m an alarmist.”

“They ought to go visit Phoenix or Denver. That would give them a whole new attitude, right quick.”

Both men nodded.

Laine asked, “Say, before we talk too much grand strategy, can you tell me how you’re keeping the refinery operational?”

“With a bit of Yankee ingenuity,” L. Roy laughed. “The staff here is excellent. You’ve got to understand that most modern refineries run a ‘closed-loop’ twenty-four-hour-a-day continuous operation. The alternative to continuous ops is ‘batch’ operations. Batch ops are usually confined to a specific grade of product, like diesel, and any operation waste is tanked. In the old days they simply pumped this waste in a nearby ditch or, if they were really ‘green,’ they put it in a clay-lined open holding pond.

“To run a continuous op, you of course need continuous feedstock that can meet the minimum ‘throughput’ and tankage for product storage for final distribution. The tricky thing is that all aspects have to be balanced to avoid stopping any of the process, whether that is feedstock delivery, throughput, or product distribution. Any bottleneck can upset the process. On the other hand, a batch op depends on a set volume of material for a set amount of yield for specific production runs and is not a reliable candidate for cogeneration due to its ‘up-and-down’ nature. You need to have around 150 pounds of steam pressure.

“So we opted to run continuously, by mothballing three of our four units. The one unit that we are running has a co-gen plant, just in case the local utility power has a hiccup. And that power can even back-feed, just in case their power plant goes down and it needs to be restarted.” After taking a noisy breath, Martin went on, “It’s a bit of a scramble, keeping enough feedstock coming in, but we’re working the kinks out.”

Laine nodded.

Martin folded his hands across his chest, and said: “I suppose you’re interested in my background too. Here’s the essentials: I spent twelve years in the Army, Signal Corps, mainly doing strategic long-haul communications systems, plus some tactical systems. In my time overseas, I saw a lot of Third World countries that were failed states. What I saw in Kosovo and in the ‘-stans’ colored my perspective on the current Crunch. Here it is in a nutshell: I think people here in the Four Corners are vastly underestimating the impact that the big cities to the south and north of us are going to have on us. Our neighbors think that we’re in a safe, isolated area, but we’re really not.”

Laine nodded in agreement, and L. Roy went on: “We’re incredibly lucky here to still have electricity. Most of the country is in the dark, and because of it, they’re rapidly descending into anarchy. Food is the other key resource, and here in the Southwest, water is scarce to grow crops. Most non-farming communities are at risk because they simply don’t have enough calories stored to get them through any kind of crisis. But storage is no more than limited capital to allow people the time to grow more food. Food production requires land, water, and the requisite experience. On a large scale, it also takes fuel. The carrying capacity of the U.S. using traditional non-petroleum farming techniques will be just a fraction of what most people think it would be. Also, most areas of the U.S., especially the cities, don’t have anywhere near enough farmable land to go back to some kind of agrarian pattern. Without public infrastructure and modern transportation, we’re going to experience a huge die-off caused mostly by starvation.”

Laine added: “I agree. And for those left, I think it’ll come down to the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have-nots.’ The psychologists call that the ‘we/they paradigm.’”

“Right! In a total collapse without immediate restoration of the power grid and the economic web, basically everyone who lives in a city is doomed unless they can take over some kind of farmland. Those that live in areas without enough farmland will be have-nots. Period. I don’t care how much food that survivalists have stored in their basements. It will run out someday. In the long term, it’s grow food and raise livestock-or die.”

L. Roy continued, “But here’s my point: those teeming millions will not just starve and go away. I believe that any family who thinks they can defend a working farm against raiders just by themselves is delusional. Humans are dangerous. The fact is, they are the most dangerous animals on earth. We must never lose sight of that. We’re now surrounded by starving predators that are much more dangerous than tigers. It won’t be like that earthquake in Haiti, where the bad guys had machetes. Here in the U.S. of A., the vast majority will be armed with firearms. The ones currently without firearms will obtain them by any means necessary, including looting government armories. These are thinking and highly motivated enemies. They know how to read maps. Some of them have a grasp of hydrology and can appreciate the difference between solely gravity-fed water systems and those that need grid power. They can put two and two together. Secondly, consider that raiders-the ‘outlaw looting groups’ that they call them now in the newspapers-may be a threat for a very short period, but I really don’t see permanent groups of more than a dozen ever forming. They will be quickly replaced by much larger groups of ‘citizens’ doing essentially the same things, but much better armed and organized.”

Laine interjected, “It may just be a matter of semantics-just what they call themselves, or the flag they fly. But they’ll still be looters by any other name.”

Martin gave Lars a thumbs-up and continued: “One of my overseas stints in stratcom was in, of all places, Albania in 1998. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time! A few hours after Albania’s political crisis started-which was caused by a huge national lottery pyramid scam-almost every adult male in the country procured an AKM from government stocks. Armories were the first targets looted. As the crisis started, I flew from Brussels back into Tirana packing a pistol and a sack of money, naively thinking I would be able to move around the country and defend myself, getting our in-place assets out of ‘jams.’ What a laugh. Everyone had me outgunned, and the vast majority of these yahoos had military training of some sort. I never got out of the capital city. Every road seemed to have roadblocks every few miles, blocked by armed local citizens.”

Martin carried on: “Without central authority, people don’t just starve and go away. They form their own polities-their own governments. These polities are often organized around town or city government or local churches. They may call it a city council or a committee or a senate. The bottom line is, ‘We the People’ will do whatever ‘we’ have to do to survive. That’s your ‘we/they paradigm’ in its essence, all the way to the point of xenophobia. And that specifically includes taking away NAPI’s grain or even just stored food that was prudently set aside by the more forward-thinking individual families. When things started to unravel, I realized that when-not if-a polity formed, I’d better be part of that process. If not, my refinery and my employees would be looked upon as ‘resources’ instead of part of-members of-the community.”

Laine jumped in: “You’ve nailed it at its essence. The local polity will pass a resolution-or ‘emergency order’ or whatever-and ‘legally’ confiscate anyone’s goods if they’re deemed to be ‘they’ instead of ‘we.’ If you resist, you’ll be crushed. They will have the resources of a whole community to draw upon including weapons, vehicles, manpower, electronics, tear gas, the whole works. Every scrap of government-owned equipment and weaponry will likely be used-by someone. Anyone who plans to hold out against that kind of threat is kidding themselves.”

L. Roy again gave a thumbs-up and continued. “That is why I pushed as hard as I could to get the county sheriff to set up roadblocks. I planted the seed and laid out the details, and now he thinks it was all his idea. Hey, whatever works! My fear is that the local polity that is now coalescing is almost certainly going to make mistakes. Some of these could be lethal blunders. I frankly don’t think the locals, except for a few of us, have given a lot of serious thought to facing long-term survival. They’ll squander resources and they’ll delay implementing necessary actions-like planting more food, or converting irrigation water systems into also handling domestic water, or working together to defend a harvest. Even worse, they may even decide to take in thousands of refugees from the big cities. That will almost ensure longer-term starvation.”

Laine chimed in: “A much better approach is to be an integral part of the community and use the combined resources of the community to defend all of our resources together. This would be much easier if a high percentage of the community were like-minded folks who are committed to sharing and cooperating while still adhering to the free market-nothing communistic or command-driven: you know, ‘top-down.’ I agree that any communities like ours with ag production are going to have to somehow survive while facing even larger polities, like the cities, counties, or even state governments-or people that call themselves by those names, to give themselves an air of authority and legitimacy.”

L. Roy said, “I can see that we are on the same sheet of music! I think we’ve both read some Ayn Rand.”

Laine gave a nod and grinned in reply.

Martin continued. “I saw this happen in microcosm in Albania. So I don’t expect to face a horde of lightly armed, starving individuals that will come at us on foot. No, sir! I expect to face a fairly professional, determined army formed by a government of some kind. Again, as you mentioned, the color of the flag they fly is meaningless. Small farming communities can support a few outsiders, but not very many. The community will need to both politically and, if need be, militarily deal with outside polities or we’ll face a war that we can’t win. In any case, the twin communities of Farmington and Bloomfield need to have a plan, and some resolve. I just hope we can muster it.”

“God willing, we’ll be able to shape that plan as community leaders instead of ‘resources,’” Lars added. After a moment Laine went on, “Well, my roadblock proposal is going up for a vote next week. Hopefully common sense and the new realities will prevail. Now, assuming that it does, I want to proceed immediately with blocking positions around Farmington that will at least be able to sound the alarm about approaching forces. I’m afraid we’re going to be on a shoestring budget.”

“So…?”

“So we’re going to need fuel. The locations for the roadblocks will be chosen based on holding commanding terrain, not just plopping down barricades that are in walking distance, right at the city limits. That is stupidity. So some of our ‘Committee of Public Safety’ men may have to drive several miles-perhaps up to fifteen miles-to man their duty shifts.”

Martin jumped in: “If we set up 24/7 security around Bloomfield, that means that they’ll need one less roadblock to defend Farmington: they watch the west for us, we watch the east for them. I’m all for that! That will cut manpower requirements by twenty-five percent. Sure, I’ll provide you the fuel.”

Lars exclaimed, “Outstanding! Thank you, sir!” Lars pulled out a notepad and pen and went on, scribbling notes, “Let’s do the math. Okay, not counting our in-town quick-reaction force-which will be set up on the Minuteman or volunteer fire department model-we’ll have four Joes manning each roadblock 24/7. Three eight-hour shifts per day, that’s twelve men per roadblock, and manning three separate roadblocks equals thirty-six trigger-pullers that need to get from Point A to Point B, every day. Each will need an average of one gallon of gas per day; I’m sure that they’ll carpool, but the leftover gas will be a perk of the job. So 36 gallons of gas per day times 365, gives us… uh… 13,140 gallons.”

“Fair enough, Lars. But you’ll need a bit more fuel to get the vehicles and materials in place to construct your blocking points, and some for your QRF’s vehicles. So… I’ll issue vouchers for 15,000 gallons of gas annually, out of my own pocket. We only have a rudimentary printing facility, and I worry a lot about forgery, so I’ll just open a standing account for each Bloomfield COPS man: 30 gallons monthly. Each time they get gas here at the plant, it will be deducted. It’s the same sorta thing that I’ve done for the staff at my ranch and for the refinery employees. It’s pretty simple accounting.”

“And darned generous of you.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be doing this unless it was in my own best interest. It’s not just the ‘24/7, 365’ that I worry about. Its the ‘24/7, 360.’ As in: 360 degrees. I want my flanks covered. So far as I know, I own the only operational light products refinery this side of Texas. That’s bound to be a tempting target.”

“It’s a humongous target.”

“Just promise me that if you go work for the folks in Farmington, you won’t go poaching for manpower in Bloomfield. We need to keep all our men with military training here,” L. Roy said.

“You have my word, Mr. Martin.”

“Did you have any other questions?”

“I’m curious. I’ve seen the ten-liter Scepter fuel cans that you’ve been selling, and I’ve heard that you bought thousands of them. That was quite prescient of you. But why do you have them priced at eight bucks in silver apiece? That’s more than a week’s pay these days. You bought them months ago, before the inflation went crazy, so they must have cost a tenth of your retail price for them in the equivalent-back in the paper dollars.”

L. Roy leaned back in his chair and gazed upward. After a lull he replied: “Three reasons: Reason one, I don’t have an unlimited supply, and we had no way of knowing when the grid might go back down locally, and if and when the big grids will go back up online. So I need to make them last. This way, when I pay my employees partly in gasoline, they’ll be sure to have containers. Reason two, I need to have fuel that is packaged for barter over long distances. The way I see it, in a couple of years here in a fuel-producing region, it will be tires that will be in short supply, and I need to be able to trade for those. Reason three is that I need more than just fuel to barter for vehicles and heavy weapons. We need to amass some more armored vehicles. So if we go out far afield, trading with people that are ‘fuel poor and vehicle rich,’ then again I need to have the requisite containers.”

“That makes sense. But, ah, what do you mean ‘more’ armored vehicles?”

“A slip of the tongue, Lars. Please don’t mention it to anyone, but I have an old M8 Greyhound-that’s a wheeled APC from World War II that’s being restored and modified up at the shop at my ranch. After that’s finished, I plan to keep it garaged here at the plant, sort of a ‘hidden stinger.’ But if things continue to deteriorate the way I imagine, we’re going to need a lot more armor to be able to put up a creditable defense.” After a pause he added: “Okay, then. We have an agreement!”

They shook hands.

As Laine stood up, he glanced over his left shoulder, and noticed a caged ladderway, leading to a trap door to the roof. Pointing with the muzzle of his rifle, he asked, “Does that ladder lead to your command post?”

“Yep. That’s my CP. You’re a very observant individual.”

“Well, I admire a man that puts an emphasis on substance over style. I can see why you picked this room for your office. I would have done the same thing.”