Expatriates (14 page)

Less than a hundred of the looters had escaped into the woods at the southeast end of the ambush zone. The ambushers first checked all of the bodies for signs of life. There were many coup de grâce shots, mostly using pistols and revolvers since rifle ammunition was considered precious. Two unarmed black teenagers were found playing possum near the southeast of the ambush. The leaders of the ambush let them live so they could deliver a message. “You
run
back to Tampa and tell them what happened here, and warn them what happens to any looters who head up this-a-way.”

Thousands of weapons and more than a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition were collected. A few of the guns had been rendered inoperable by bullet hits, but most of them were still serviceable, albeit sticky with blood. Others had been ruined—like shotguns with their barrels pierced by rifle bullets—but they could still be salvaged for valuable parts. Since the looters had outnumbered the ambushers so heavily, most of the men each went home with between one and four captured guns. Tomas picked up a parkerized Ithaca Model 37 Military and Police shotgun with an 8-round magazine. Aside from one notch in the bottom of the buttstock where a bullet had grazed it, the shotgun was in good working order. Jake got a Springfield Armory XD 40 pistol and three extra magazines. He also found a Kel-Tec SU-16 rifle beneath one of the bodies.

Seeing the Kel-Tec, Tomas declared, “Not the best, but at least those take standard AR or M16 magazines. That'll be good for barter.” Tomas showed Jake how to unload the rifle and fold its stock. Once it was folded, the gun fit easily in Jake's rucksack with room to spare.

Stripping the guns, magazines, ammunition, and holsters from the looters turned into a chaotic grabfest. Tomas commented that it was like some giant piñata
had burst and rained down guns and magazines. The nicest gun they saw recovered was a Tavor TAR-21—a bullpup configuration .223 rifle designed in Israel. The gun's new owner was ecstatic. The rapid-pace gun snatching was followed by countless impromptu barter transactions. One ambusher took the initiative to shout, “I got two AKs and a Glock .40 here. I'll trade all three of them for a FAL or an M1A.” Everywhere around them, trades were being made. It looked incongruous to see this trading going on, as everyone was walking amidst so many lifeless bodies. As Jake later recounted the scene to Janelle, “It was like some strange flashback of the aftermath of a medieval battle, with the peasants stripping the swords and bows and armor from the bodies of the defeated army. It was just surreal.”

Several uniformed police officers from Mount Dora and Tavares filled shopping carts with the less desirable guns that had been passed over. There were mostly single- and double-barreled shotguns and .22 rifles. Jake wondered whether the policemen had been ordered to do this, or whether they were just taking advantage of the situation for their own gain. In either case, no looters would have these weapons now.

Jake noticed that the man who had just been asking for .25-06 ammunition had found himself a CETME .308 rifle. The rifle looked a lot like an HK91, but it had a wooden stock and forend. Jake nodded to the man, and said, “That'll do. Scrounge as much .308 ball ammo as you can.”

Tomas added his own advice. “You may have heard that CETME will also take G3 or HK91 magazines, but you might have to file on the mags a bit, depending on the receiver's tolerances.” Jake always marveled at the depth and breadth of firearms knowledge that Tomas possessed.

After most of the ambushers had started walking homeward, a pair of D6 bulldozers were started and walked around the north end of the roadblock. With many successive passes, they cut a four-foot-deep trench for a length of 350 yards for a mass grave. A few of the most widely scattered bodies were dragged in by hand, but most of them were simply pushed into the grave with the bulldozer blades. Before the grave was refilled with earth, a Catholic minister gave a funeral oration.

Jake and Tomas didn't talk much as they walked home. Their elation at the success of the ambush was tempered by its bloody aftermath. Jake summed it up when he resignedly said, “It had to be done.” He didn't sleep well for a month.

“A very few—very few—isolated locations around the world, where it was possible to impose a rigid quarantine and where authorities did so ruthlessly, escaped the disease entirely. American Samoa was one such place. There not a single person died of influenza.

“Across a few miles of ocean lay western Samoa, seized from Germany by New Zealand at the start of the war. On September 30, 1918, its population was 38,302, before the steamer
Talune
brought the disease to the island. A few months later, the population was 29,802. Twenty-two percent of the population died.”

—John M. Barry,
The Great Influenza

T
wo days after the big ambush on Highway 441, Mayor Jenkins of Mount Dora and Mayor Levin of Tavares had a private meeting at Levin's home a few hundred yards east of the Ruby Street Grille. This was the fourth time they had a face-to-face meeting since the Crunch began. To get to the meeting, Mayor Jenkins motored west in his 14-foot Glasstream, a twenty-year-old boat that before the Crunch he had used mostly for fishing. After the Crunch, he found it was one the safest ways to travel without a bodyguard, so he often used it to get to meetings and to go barter for local produce.

Not only were the two mayors old friends, but they looked like bookends. They were graying and pudgy, and both wore khaki pants. They were each native-born in their respective towns, and they had attended the University of Central Florida at the same time. Levin had earned a bachelor of science in criminal justice, while Jenkins had majored in business administration. Oddly, their bond didn't stem from being in the same fraternity or living in the same dormitory. It was because they were both country boys, and both commuted to the university. Unlike the rich city kids in the dorms, who were constantly partying, Levin and Jenkins were relatively sober and studious. And since they drove to their parents' homes each night, they always felt like
observers
of the campus life, rather than fully immersed participants. As commuter students, they developed their friendship in quiet conversation at the university library.

Their careers were different, but their success had been roughly parallel. Levin rose through the ranks of the Tavares Police Department to become chief of police. He was a savvy investor who had put all of his liquid assets in silver in 1999. Silver had bottomed two years later, but in subsequent years it had seen tremendous gains. Meanwhile, Jenkins had launched several businesses—which he sold in quick succession. When he was in his thirties he got the itch for politics, starting with the Mount Dora City Council and the County Board of Supervisors. Both men had married in their mid-twenties and then had small families. They both had homes on Lakeshore Drive, although Jenkins had a much larger one.

They first talked briefly about two familiar topics: finding sources of fuel that might be bartered, and developing markets to keep local citrus fruits and corn from going to waste. Then Mayor Jenkins adopted a more serious tone. “Some of the men who were in the two big reserves at the far ends of the ambush have complained that they were shortchanged when the distribution of the weapons from the looters took place. Most of those reserve forces were composed of men—and a few ladies—from Bay Ridge and Plymouth Terrace. I've been hearing, in no uncertain terms, from the mayors in both towns. They're complaining they got
shorted
.”

“Distribution? It was more like a free-for-all. It looked like that Free Cheese Day riot they had in Miami. We were both at the ambush and saw what happened. I think I was closer to the trailer roadblock than you were. Down at my end, during the ‘distribution,' there were some harsh words, and even some shoving going on.”

“Well, they still feel like they got shorted. So I think we ought to give them those shopping carts full of guns that our officers collected.”

Mayor Levin nodded. “Fair enough. Let's throw 'em a bone. We'll give them each about a hundred guns. In fact, let's also offer Plymouth Terrace that armored bulldozer. It's not much use to either of us—since it is more offensive than defensive. It should be fairly easy for them to find another engine to put in it.”

After nodding sharply and letting out a sigh, Byer Levin continued, “I have something much more important that we need to discuss, Lyle.”

“What?”

“I had a long talk with my son this morning. As you know, he's a ham radio operator and my main source of information on the Big Picture, throughout the southeast and beyond. He's up past midnight most nights, scanning through the ham bands and international broadcast bands. He says there's report of a stomach flu, a
very bad
flu, that is working its way down the coast from the Northeast. It's now in the Carolinas. It's hard to tell exactly, but if all the chatter on the amateur nets is true, it is killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it may kill
millions
before it is done. And from the reports, it's not the flu itself that is the real killer, but rather the diarrhea that comes with it.”

Lyle Jenkins looked stunned. “I think it's time to call ‘Madagascar.'”

Byer cocked his head in question.

Lyle went on. “When I was younger, I used to play a computer game called
Pandemic II
. In that game, the president of Madagascar is always quick to isolate the country to prevent the encroachment of any pandemic. It kind of became a standing joke among gamers, and the term
Madagascar
even started being used by epidemiologists. ‘Going Madagascar' is essentially slamming the doors shut—a total quarantine—in the hopes of avoiding the spread of an infectious disease. Since we have the lakes as natural barriers, we may have a chance.”

“Then that's what we'll do.”

Within a few days, the
soldados
manning the roadblocks around Mount Dora and Tavares had been given new instructions to turn back
everyone
, until further notice.

A new roadblock was set up on the bridge over the Dead River to the north, and they built up a heavy defensive line south of Mount Dora. Another new roadblock was established on the Lake Harris Bridge, on Highway 19. This isolated them from the town of Howey-in-the-Hills.

The mayors issued identical proclamations, calling for special precautions to be taken at shared wells, curtailing public gatherings, and urging frequent hand washing. The proclamations also asked all residents to salute each other rather than shake hands. This was reminiscent of the flu pandemic during World War I, when saluting also became the custom.

Though they were unpopular at first—since they stifled local commerce—the full quarantine roadblocks and other measures worked. While most cities and towns in Florida lost up to thirty percent of their populations in the two waves of flu that followed, Tavares and Mount Dora completely avoided the pandemic.

The pandemic die-off brought an end to large-scale looter forays out of Orlando. Afterward, the looters raids were never in groups larger than forty people. There were still substantial losses by the roadblock teams and QRTs in Tavares, but they could be sustained.

“Kriget är icke en ström eller en sjö utan ett hav med allt ont.”
(Loosely translated: “War is not a river, or a lake, but an ocean of all that is evil.”)

—Gustavus Adolphus

O
n their third night of motoring through the Celebes Sea, Tatang's boat came close to several small low-lying islands. When they shut down the engine at dawn, the GPS showed that they were eight miles from the nearest island on their starboard side and eleven miles to another on their port side. As dawn broke, none of these islands could be seen over the horizon. But as the boat gradually drifted during the day, the palm tree cover of the nearest island came into view. By the late afternoon, they were feeling exposed.

As Joseph was preparing their evening meal, Rhiannon was alarmed to hear a boat motor in the distance. At first they couldn't determine the direction. Rhiannon broke out the binoculars and began scanning the horizon. Tatang pulled his M1 Garand rifle from its case and slipped a spare 8-round clip onto its sling, the bullet tips clinging like interwoven fingers. This gave him a quick reload close at hand.

The boat was approaching quickly from the west. The glare of the sunset masked their approach until they were less than five hundred yards away. Joseph started
Tiburon
's engine. He instinctively brought the throttle forward and turned away from the approaching boat, presenting their stern to the intruders. Once it was obvious that the boat was headed directly toward them, Joseph pushed the throttle wide open.

The unknown boat was a black Woosung-Zebec 13-foot rigid inflatable, with a large outboard engine. Judging by the rapid speed at which they approached, it was obvious that they could outrun
Tiburon
. It was styled much like the classic Zodiac brand, but produced in South Korea. There were three ILF or Indo soldiers aboard and two of them were armed with Pindad SS2-V1 folding stock rifles.

Still holding the binoculars, Rhiannon declared, “They're wearing camos and they have long guns. They look like .223s.” After a pause, she added, “I can spot for you, Tatang.” She had grown up hunting deer and elk in British Columbia, so Peter didn't protest. He knew Rhiannon was better qualified for the job.

One of the men in the bow of the inflatable began firing even though they were out of effective range.

Tatang muttered, “No question now.” He clicked the Garand's safety forward and took a wrap of the sling around his forearm. He shouted to Joseph, “Keep on a straight course!”

Joseph hunched down over the wheel. His Ruger 10/22 rifle lay across his lap with a 25-round magazine inserted. It would be better than nothing if they needed backup.

Tatang judged their distance at 450 yards away and closing. Both of the men in the bow of the inflatable were now firing in a rapid cadence, semiauto.
Tiburon
was still outside the range of their Pindad .223 rifles but well inside the effective range of a M1 Garand.

On board
Tiburon
, they began to hear bullets zipping over their heads. Kneeling at the stern rail, Tatang took careful aim and began to fire. With each shot, Rhiannon, kneeling beside him, observed with the sun-shaded binoculars and shouted a brief report: “Can't tell . . . Low . . . Can't tell . . . Two feet low . . . You got one—he's down!”

The Indonesian beside the man who had just been shot rolled to his side to change magazines. Tatang fired three more times. His second and third shots hit the exposed soldier. One of those bullets passed through his body and grazed the knee of the soldier at the rear, who was steering the boat. As Tatang fired his eighth shot, he heard the distinctive
ping
of the Garand ejecting its empty clip. He immediately reloaded the rifle with the spare clip hanging from the sling, nearly catching his thumb in the rifle's action in his haste. As he did so, the inflatable, now just three hundred yards astern, veered sharply to the left.

Joseph chopped the throttle, dipping
Tiburon
's bow. Peter shouted, “They're running!”

The inflatable was now presented broadside to their
stern. Both of the men in the bow were down, gushing blood. The pilot in the back of the boat was crouched down, doing his best to escape. Navarro resumed firing at a slightly faster tempo. Rhiannon, still spotting, reported, “Just behind him—lead a little.”

Tatang fired again, and Rhiannon called the shot: “Just ahead of him.”

The third and fourth shots both hit the soldier. “Hit in the chest. Hit in the head. He's down,” said Rhiannon.

With the soldier's hand now off the outboard's spring-loaded throttle, it automatically “dead-manned” to a low idle, and the inflatable ceased throwing any wake.

“Come about, Joey, and bring us alongside, reeeaal slow,” Tatang shouted to Joseph. The boy did as he was told.

As they got within one hundred yards, Tatang shouted to Joseph, “If you don't mind, I'm going to finish this up with your .22—the big rifle's ammo is too precious for this.” Tatang handed his Garand to Peter and then reached over his shoulder to take the Ruger 10/22 that Joseph held forward.

When they were sixty yards from the inflatable, the elder Navarro resumed firing, with the much quieter .22 rimfire. The old man shot each of the Indonesian soldiers twice more, in the head. He said resignedly, “We gotta be sure they're really dead.” His last shot was fired when they were less than fifty feet away from the Woosung inflatable. After his final shot, he clicked the rifle's crossbolt safety and handed it back to Joseph.

Peter approached Rhiannon and laid a hand on her shoulder. “It had to be done.” She nodded in reply, with tears welling up in her eyes.

They could see that there was just one rifle left in the Woosung. Any others had obviously been dropped overboard. The three Indo soldiers were in grotesque death postures. One of the men's jaws had flapped open unnaturally wide on one side, broken by a rifle bullet. The inflatable boat was a blood-drenched mess.

Rhiannon turned to face her husband. Wiping away a tear, she said, “That's the first time I've ever spotted for someone with bullets coming back from the
other
direction. A bit too exciting.” She gave a faint smile.

Peter said, “Yeah, the proverbial two-way shooting range.”

Joseph throttled
Tiburon
's engine back to a minimum and they crept up to the inflatable. Rhiannon said, “I'm going to go keep Sarah occupied down below.”

Peter nodded. “Good idea.”

Rhiannon handed the binoculars to Peter, who began scanning, mostly toward the island.

Tatang used a gaff hook to snag one of the lines that ran down the top of each of the inflation cells. Peter draped himself across the stern rail and held on to the gaff, which allowed Tatang to jump into the inflatable. The old man did so with a catlike grace that surprised Jeffords.

Joseph said, “I've never seen so much blood, coming from people. Looks like the floor of the
carneceria
on a slaughter day.”

Working quickly, Tatang picked up the only remaining SS2 rifle and rotated its safety lever leftward to what he presumed to be the safe position. He pointed the muzzle skyward and gave the trigger a pull. It didn't move. “She's safe.”

Tatang handed the rifle up to Joseph, butt first. He quickly stripped off the web gear harnesses from the three bodies. The harnesses each had four magazine pouches.

There was no question of taking the boat with them. Not only was it now obviously leaking from multiple .30-06 bullet hits, but there was blood everywhere.

Tatang grabbed a rubberized haversack and one empty rifle magazine from the floor of the boat. That left just the bodies and the outboard engine, which was still gurgling. Tatang took another look around the inflatable and then disconnected its four-gallon gas tank. He handed it up to Joseph, saying, “Gas can't work in our engine, but it still could come in handy, maybe to trade.” Last, he flicked open his
balisong
folding knife and slashed down the length of both inflation cells—from stem to stern. He spun the knife with a flourish, returning it to a closed position, and tucked it back into his front pocket.

As he stepped back up into
Tiburon
, holding on to the gaff, his feet were already under five inches of water. Starved for fuel, the outboard engine sputtered to a stop. Less than a minute later, the boat slipped beneath the water. The bodies went down with it, although they seemed to linger near the surface while the boat disappeared rapidly out of sight. The weight of the big outboard engine had dragged the deflated boat down, stern first. A few large bubbles escaped from the cells as it sank.

Tatang and Peter paused for a moment to watch the boat's descent in horrified fascination as a few more bubbles rose to the surface of the red-stained water.

Joseph restarted
Tiburon
's engine. The sun was below the horizon, and the sky was already starting to darken. Navarro gave his nephew directions. “Steer southeast, with the full throttle.”

Washing the blood, intestinal contents, and brain matter off of the rifle, web gear, gas tank, and Tatang's shoes required bucket after bucket of seawater. After the fifth bucket, Peter brought a stiff bristle brush up from below deck. It took them another twenty minutes and many more buckets of seawater to get everything cleaned up.

That evening, Tatang took the wheel. Working below, Peter patiently cleaned and oiled the SS2 rifle. He recognized its design. It used the same gas system as the famous FN FAL, but it was scaled down for the smaller 5.56 mm NATO cartridge—the same cartridge used in M16 rifles. Unlike a FAL, the rifle's charging handle was on the right-hand side. Peter would have preferred it to be on the left, like a FAL, since manipulating the bolt on this rifle required either reaching over the top of the receiver with his left hand or removing his firing hand from the pistol grip.

Joseph's cleaning rod for his .22 caliber Ruger rifle worked passably well in cleaning the bore of the new rifle. Rhiannon, Joseph, and Sarah watched with rapt interest as Peter worked. They asked occasional questions about the rifle and its shooting characteristics. The mechanics of the SS2 were easy to figure out, except for its folding stock, which required some practice to push down to rotate shut. Opening the stock was quick and easy, but Peter found folding the stock to be more cumbersome. Rhiannon thought the rifle's spring-loaded action dust cover was especially clever. The rifle's safety selector was of particular interest. It had three positions—the third one was for full-automatic fire. This was the first time Peter had ever handled a fully automatic weapon and the “cool” factor took a long time to wear off. Overall, he was pleased with the rifle.

Because they'd been drenched by seawater, cleaning all of the magazines took longer than cleaning the rifle itself. With the help of Rhiannon and Joseph, each magazine was emptied of its cartridges and then each cartridge individually dried with rags. Each round was carefully rubbed down with coconut oil and then redried with a fresh rag. This time-consuming process took an hour and used up nearly all of Tatang's bundle of rags.

Almost as an afterthought, Peter realized that the magazines could also be disassembled and cleaned. It took him a while to figure out how to slide off the floorplates from the magazines. He used a rag wrapped around a foot-long nipa shaft to dry and then oil the inside of each magazine body, rubbing down their springs, again with coconut oil.

Peter and Joseph reloaded three of the magazines with thirty cartridges each and bagged up the rest of the ammo and the spare magazines. They would need to reinspect them for the next several days, given the highly corrosive nature of salt water. Jeffords also decided to let the magazine pouches dry for several days before reinserting any magazines. In all, there were fourteen magazines for the rifle, and 362 live cartridges.

As Peter finished his work, Joseph looked admiringly at the rifle. “Mr. Jeffords, God has been good to us. He has delivered us
twice
from the Indos. And now we have another good rifle with plenty of ammo.”

Peter nodded. “And that's the way the Lord provides for his Covenant People. We are undeserving, unworthy, and little better than unrepentant sinners. Yet he cares for us, and protects us. We are truly blessed, and we can only credit all this to Christ Jesus. He died for us.”

Joseph grinned broadly. “Amen and amen.”