6. Treat every approaching stranger as a potential enemy.
7. Keep your friends close and your enemies at 9x distance.
8. No guard quits their post unless properly relieved.
9. Severe punishment for anyone who falls asleep while on watch.
10. Horse grooming and hoof work daily, without fail.
11. No lights visible from outside after dark.
12. Good stewardship in all things. No wasteful behavior!
13. Keep proper sanitation and cleanliness.
14. Leave every gate the way you found it, unless told otherwise.
15. Maintain everything to last a lifetime-it may have to!
16. Rust is an enemy. Oil and grease are allies.
17. Maintain the “need to know” rule. No loose lips!
18. Courteous behavior and Christian attitudes, always.
19. No foul or blasphemous language.
20. Respect everyone’s privacy.
21. 100% effort. No slacking on chores.
22. Health and safety are top priorities.
23. Watch for signs of dehydration and hypothermia-self and others.
24. Be honest and forthright in all business dealings.
25. Recognize the head of the house as final authority on all decisions.
26. Count your blessings.
27. Be charitable and tithe consistently.
28. Smile! God loves you. You are in His covenant.
Below that, Lisbeth added a quote from her favorite Psalm:
“The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.”
20. Tentacles
“The government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself.”
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
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
