Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

43. Escape and Evasion

Blanca’s instructions were simple: “Stay with the vehicles. If our trucks get spotted by anyone from La Fuerza before the scheduled kick-off time for the raid, then radio the team leaders and let them know immediately.”

She waited, listened, and prayed, clutching her Mini-14 GB. Then she heard shooting and explosions in the distance, right on time. An hour later she heard the teams start to return, crashing through the brush. Ian was with them but Alex was not. In accordance with their plans, all the vehicles departed at 5:30 a.m. Everyone had been warned that if they didn’t make it to the parking area by then, they’d be on their own to E&E their way back to Prescott.

Back at the Conley Ranches clubhouse, they had an anxious day of waiting. Stragglers came in, only two of them wounded. At just after five p.m., Ian greeted a man in his fifties who had just arrived. He was carrying two rifles, an M1 Garand in his hands and a Ruger Mini-14 slung across his back. Ian recognized a distinctive camouflage sling on the Mini-14: this rifle belonged to his brother Alex. He asked the man: “Where’s Alex?”

Looking glum, the man shook his head slowly from side to side in response. “He got shot bad, through a lung. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.

“Did he say anything, before… before he died?”

“No, sorry. He was just coughing, and then he died.”

Ian’s eyes welled up. “Well, thanks for letting me know. You can keep that Ruger,” he said.

The man shook Ian’s hand and thanked him, and then he turned to go check in formally with Doctor K.

That evening the Four Families began frantically packing up their gear, their clothing, and their meager supply of remaining stored food. Two of the families decided to move to a fairly heavily defended compound in Prescott Valley. They’d take a circuitous route, looping around to avoid La Fuerza’s suspected avenue of advance. The other two families, led by Doctor K., had decided to leave the region entirely. They would travel in two RVs and four SUVs. One of the SUVs was Alex’s Ford Excursion. This vehicle, along with nearly all of Alex’s gear, had been given to Doctor K. by Ian. Ian explained that even if he had wanted it, the cramped space and weight limitations of the two Larons were unforgiving. All that Ian kept from Alex’s room was some 5.56mm NATO ammunition and nine Mini-14 magazines. Previously, Alex had explained to Blanca to beware of using anything except original Ruger factory-made magazines in her rifle. “All of the other brands of magazines-the aftermarket ones-are jammamatic junk,” he warned.

Doctor K. offered to have Ian and Blanca come with him in his Fleetwood diesel-pusher RV. But without trailers there would be no way to take the Larons. Ian answered him quickly, “Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather stick with what we know best, and that’s flying. Let’s just wish each other God’s speed.”

Ian Doyle had already toyed with the idea of paralleling the route that they had planned to take the RVs, leapfrogging from airport to airport. But he concluded that his best chance of finding a truly safe refuge before either running out of fuel or running out of luck was to head to Todd Gray’s retreat in north-central Idaho.

Lars had an anxious morning, waiting for his infantry team to arrive. He penned an after-action report and asked to have it delivered to Doctor K. Bob Potts was the last one back, arriving at eleven a.m. He was dripping with sweat. By the time he arrived, the horses were already loaded in trailers and the rest of the team was packed up and ready to go. After some handshakes and a long pull on a canteen, Potts and the others climbed aboard the pickups. There was no ceremony. There was no celebration. They had done what needed to be done, and they were just happy to be heading home. Lars was anxious to be well away from La Fuerza before they had the chance to regroup. Hector’s arm was decorated with a new row of thirty-seven surgical staples. He said the arm was painful, but regular doses of pain meds from Johanna Visser made it manageable. Other than Hector’s wound, Lars’s team got away unscathed.

They drove beyond Flagstaff to Winona the first night and camped just off Twin Arrows Road, east of town. They were all edgy and had difficulty sleeping. Shortly after they left the next morning, they were surprised to see a small herd of elk on a hillside just above the road. They braked to a halt and Chad Stenerson rested his scoped M1A across the hood of the lead pickup. He dropped a cow and a bull in rapid succession. This took six shots. The other elk fled into the nearby timber. In less than an hour the elk that had been shot were gutted and dragged down to the pickups. With all eight members of the team working together, dragging the elk down to the trucks was relatively easy. But it took considerable effort to get them up on the fuel trailer. After that, the rest of the trip home was speedy and trouble-free.

With two of the gold coins that he had earned from the Humboldt raid, Lars bought two 9mm pistols, a Glock 17 and a Glock 19. These used magazines that were largely interchangeable, although the short magazines from the Model 19 would not work in the longer-gripped Model 17. Together, the two pistols came with just five magazines and one holster. He badly wanted some more magazines, but they were a scarce commodity. Few people were willing to part with any extra magazines. As one Navajo vendor explained it to Beth, “In bad times, when people are shootin’ at you, what exactly is a spare magazine? There’s no such thing. You can never have too many. Same thing for ammo.”

The only magazines that the Laines often saw regularly offered for sale at the flea market were military-surplus M16 alloy thirty-round magazines, which had been produced in huge numbers. But even those now had ridiculously high asking prices. Seeing the depleted shelves and such high prices on a visit to Zia Sporting Goods in Farmington, Beth commented, “We really should’ve invested in magazines and ammunition. It would have been a better investment than silver. Lars sighed and replied, “Yeah, you’re right. Ammo is practically worth its weight in silver, these days, and magazines are a you-name-your-price kind of item.”

Lars would have actually preferred to have bought a couple of SIG P226 or P228 pistols to be compatible with Andy’s first pistol, but those were much more scarce than Glocks. In the new Age of Deep Schumer, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He also realized that his chances of eventually finding spare Glock magazines was much better than finding spare SIG magazines, since Glocks were made in much larger numbers.