Founders (23 page)

Woolson discovered that the two highest-ranking officers on the UNPROFOR contact team had drinking problems. So he kept them well supplied with liquor. This tactic further slowed the pace of the meetings.

In a secret meeting with no UN officers present, Woolson told his staff, “We continue the tap dance and treat them like mushrooms—we keep them in the dark and spread the steer manure around liberally. We stall them, and pencil whip them, and play charades as long as possible. Most importantly, we
do not
let them have the codes so that none of the LCCs can be accessed. To make it look like we are being compliant, we will let them ‘inspect’ as many LFs as they’d like—very slowly and laboriously, mind you—but we make excuses so that we never,
ever
, give a UN officer access to an LCC capsule. We can walk them around
upstairs
at the MAFs and give them nice dog-and-pony shows and pretty little PowerPoint presentations until they are blue in the face. But the bottom line is that they never get the crypto keys. The LCCs stay
locked down
, gentlemen. We will deny them any launch capability.”

As a contingency, Woolson ordered that thermite devices be built and secretly distributed. These were a last-ditch measure, designed to destroy both the encrypted blast door locks at the LCCs and the jackscrew mechanisms for the seven-ton “B Plugs” at the LFs. This contingency plan was given the code name “Uniform Delta,” which stood for “ultimate denial.”

Secretly, the UN staff had decided that there wasn’t enough manpower that could be spared to secure and reactivate Malmstrom’s vast missile fields. And, after all, the missiles weren’t needed anyway. They had plenty of operational missiles in France, Russia, and China—at least as long as Russia and China continued
to toe the line. The stated goal of “reactivation” of Malmstrom was in fact a “capability denial operation.”

The key to the UN’s denial strategy was the decision to delay restoration of grid power to western Montana. The UN’s general staff had concluded that if they wanted to keep the American missiles neutered, all they needed to do was delay having the power grid in that region reenergized.

“Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”

—Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion, from his first book of
Principia

There was someone banging on the door downstairs. The bedside windup clock showed that it was 5:15 a.m. General store owner Sheila Randall quickly dressed and walked downstairs from the apartment to her store. A man from the Resistance whom she recognized was outside. He was shivering, standing in a heavy downpour with a dribble coming off the brim of his fishing hat. Sheila unlocked the door and the man stepped in. He was dressed in dark civilian clothes, with a brown North Face jacket. The rainwater dripping off of him made a spreading puddle on the floor.

“I’m sorry to arrive like this without any warning, but I need your help,” he said urgently. “We’ve got a man in our truck who’s been shot in the leg and in the shoulder. He’s stable, but we can’t get him to our field hospital in Russell Springs before daylight. Our intel says that there are Germans and Belgians patrolling the roads between here and there, there’s a temporary checkpoint on
Highway 68, and there may be an ambush set up somewhere along Liberty Road. We’ve also heard that there might be a reconnaissance drone up later today, that they’ve been flying in daylight hours out of Fort Campbell. If we use a team on foot to carry him on a stretcher, it’ll take a full day, and he’s likely to go hypothermic. We’d rather wait until either tomorrow night or the night after and carry him by truck, even if we have to make a roundabout trip.”

Sheila nodded and said, “Okay, but the last time you came here, it was just that gal with the shrapnel. I don’t know how to take care of someone with major wounds.”

“Don’t fret, we’re also dropping off a medic named Brent, to take care of him.”

Sheila nodded again. “All right, let’s bring him in the side door, and help him up the stairs.”

As she swung open the side door, she saw her son, Tyree, descending the stairs behind her. He was wearing pajamas and carrying his shotgun. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I’m afraid that you’re going to have to give up your bed again.”

Tyree grinned and said, “No prob, Mom. I’m an early riser, anyway.”

The resistance fighter they carried up the stairs from the store to Sheila’s apartment was named Jedediah Peoples. He was nineteen years old. He wore a wispy beginner’s mustache and was from Westmoreland, Tennessee, near the Kentucky state line. He had been shot through the left buttock and thigh. These were large, ugly wounds, but not life-threatening. Sheila was impressed by Brent Danley, even though he wore a pair of eyeglasses that had comical-looking repairs to the bridge and one of the eyepieces. The repairs had been made with paper clips and surgical tape. Brent had thinning reddish brown hair. He was soft-spoken and competent.

Brent treated Jedediah’s wounds carefully, and he gave him pain
medicine—Tylenol with codeine—only as needed, following a series of “On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe the pain . . . ?” questions. Rather than attempting to stitch the wounds closed, Brent left them loosely covered with gauze to allow drainage. He explained that this was actually the safest way to treat them. “It’ll leave bigger scars, but this way there’s less chance of infection.”

As Brent was rebandaging one of the wounds, Jedediah winced with pain and said, “I always figured we’d get raptured before we’d ever go through anything like this.”

Brent shook his head slowly and replied, “You mean the collapse and the invasion? I believe that’s the same thing that some people were saying in Stalingrad during World War II.”

“You know,” Brent went on, “in Vermont I had a neighbor who lived down the road from me. He and his family starved and froze to death the first winter after the Crunch. He and his wife were totally convinced that they’d be raptured before any disaster would threaten them. He told me that he thought that storing food in anticipation of hard times was a display of a lack of faith in God’s providence. He used to give me a hard time for being a prepper.”

The young man nodded, and Brent continued, “A lot of well-meaning believers have the same sort of complacency. That dispensational pre-tribulation rapture nonsense was often combined with their bogus ‘Health, Wealth, and Prosperity’ preaching. They have a similar eschatological basis. It is the whole ‘Beam Me Up’ mind-set. It goes along with the ‘Feel Good, Jesus Is Your Buddy’ mentality. But if the history of the church has taught us anything, it is that the life of a Christian is fraught with peril. The world hates us, and everything that we stand for. They pound on us as often as they can. Being a Christian doesn’t exempt us from that. If anything, it actually means that we’ll get more pain and suffering inflicted on us than non-Christians. Just look at
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
Have you read that?”

“No.”

“Well you should, if you can ever find a copy. All that bad doctrine from the new Emergent Church movement led a lot of deceived Christians to be complacent toward being prepared for themselves and their loved ones. Everyone got a rude awakening when the dollar crashed and the power grids went down. The
proper
Christian way to live is to stock up for your family, and that also gives you extra to dispense as charity.”

Sheila’s elderly grandmother Lily relayed messages about the care of Jedediah downstairs to Sheila, who was working at her store’s front counter most of the day. Sheila asked Lily to carry up extra food and some fresh cream that she took in trade on a barter transaction.

When Curt was hired, Ken and Terry decided that it was time to press on. They felt good departing, knowing that Curt would be there to fill the security role they had occupied. They were almost ready to leave at any time, except that Ken’s boots were worn out and starting to fall apart. With some inquiries via the local CB radio network, they found some tan suede military surplus boots that were snug, but his size. They were comfortable if he wore just one pair of socks, but not two as he had with his old boots. The boots were a gift from the Norwoods, who insisted that they buy them to compensate the Laytons for their many months of guard duty, manure hauling, and water hauling. They cost $2.25 in silver quarters.

Looking carefully at their maps, and after much consultation and debate, they decided that rather than trying to cross the Northern Rockies, it would be safer to veer south and get to north-central Idaho by way of the Great Basin. There were many rumors of banditry in eastern Montana. By taking a more southerly route,
not only would they be traversing more sparsely populated country, but also the population would be predominantly Mormon. Given the Mormon proclivity for food storage preparedness, they anticipated they would probably be more hospitable to travelers. They also hoped that if they were able to get to Salt Lake City, they might find people with operating vehicles, as there was a large oil refinery just north of the city.

The Norwoods had cousins in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, the Bennet family. They were cousins on Cordelia’s side of the family. It was decided that Graham and the Laytons would ride horseback to Scottsbluff. From there, Ken and Terry would continue west on foot. Meanwhile, Graham would return to Newell with the horses.

For the trip, they selected the Norwoods’ three saddle horses, plus their old mare, Molly, to use as a packhorse. Molly was elderly, but their draft horse Andre was too valuable to the family to put at risk in a cross-country trip. Carrying a packsaddle holding the Laytons’ two ALICE packs and Graham’s bedroll, Molly’s load would be only 110 pounds. The packsaddle was of the modern frameless type, and made of red Cordura nylon. The bright red color made Ken and Terry cringe. The untactical color was remedied by strapping a woodland camouflage quilted poncho liner over the load. This worked perfectly, since the poncho liner already had grommet tie straps spaced around its perimeter, and some extra length was simply tucked between the packsaddle and the saddle pad.

The ride to Scottsbluff was uneventful, and the weather was fairly good, with a few showers. The grazing was sparse for the horses, with just a few patches of new growth. When the horses did pass over any new growth, they would play naughty and put their heads down and pause to graze. Urging them on took some effort. For the sake of their horses, they picked their campsites in areas where there was grass coming up. As was their habit,
they made cold camps each night, not wanting to attract attention. With some pasture available, hobbling was all that was necessary to keep their horses in camp.

They averaged forty miles a day. They did their best to avoid towns and any terrain that looked like it would be advantageous for ambushes. After so many months of traveling on foot and at night, travel by horseback in daylight required some adjustment for the Laytons. For the horses, the biggest adjustment was getting used to riding widely spaced apart—typically fifteen to twenty yards when on level, open ground. For the first two days, the horses would invariably attempt to bunch up. It was Molly who proved to be the magnet to the other horses. “I say that we make Molly the caboose of this outfit,” Graham proposed. It was only with that resequencing and some consistent reining that the horses became accustomed to wider intervals.

Graham turned seventeen on the third day of the trip to Scottsbluff. That evening, as they made camp, Ken presented him a cloth sack containing twenty-five rounds of .45 automatic ammunition as a thank-you for escorting them, and in recognition of his birthday.

They avoided the city of Scottsbluff itself, angling in from the northeast, through ranching country. The Bennets lived on Henry Road, northwest of Scottsbluff, a stone’s throw from the Wyoming state line. Arriving saddle sore late in the afternoon of the sixth day, they were warmly greeted. The Bennets lived in an older ranch-style house on four acres. Before the economic collapse, Dale Bennet had been a full-time grassland botanist with the state of Nebraska, and did the same part-time under contract for the state of Wyoming. His specialty was introduced grasses and weeds. He was also involved in a planned decades-long program to reintroduce native grasses. The Bennets had survived since the Crunch by breeding New Zealand and Rex rabbits. The acreage behind their house was dotted with cobbled-together sheds built out of scrap
lumber, pallets, and recycled corrugated steel roofing from barns. The sheds held dozens of homemade wire rabbit cages.

They turned their horses out into a fenced field that Dale Bennet used for growing feed for his rabbits. Part of it was seeded in an early-sprouting grass variety, so the horses starting eating with gusto, even before they had been unsaddled.

The Bennets were overjoyed to see Graham, and thrilled to receive two lengthy letters from his mother. Graham’s four cousins, ages six to thirteen, were whooping and hollering. The younger ones jumped onto his back for piggyback rides.

The Bennets celebrated the arrival and Graham’s birthday by barbequing five rabbits. The barbeque party went on until late in the evening, as everyone traded stories about their lives since the Crunch.

In relating their tale, Terry mentioned that they planned to continue their journey to their group retreat by way of Montpelier, Idaho. Dale interjected, “Well, you need to talk with my friend Cliff. He’s planning on taking a drive out to northern Utah, real soon.”

Ken was speechless. He asked, incredulously, “Taking a
drive
?”

Dale nodded. “Yeah! We’ll walk over to Cliff’s house tomorrow morning, and I’ll introduce you.”

After a night of fitful sleep, they awoke to the smell of pancakes. The Bennets were using some of their precious supplies to make a large breakfast for Graham and the Laytons. After breakfast, just as promised, Dale escorted Ken and Terry on a half mile walk to the trailer home of his friend Cliff.