“So what are we going to do?” Sheila asked.
Hodges sighed. After another long pause, he answered, “We just keep our heads down and we pick our fights. If we come out slugging too soon, or fight them on their terms, then we’re going to get creamed. But if we pick the time and the place, then we can do some considerable damage and they won’t know what hit them.”
39. Whirlwind
“You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, training them up in God’s fear, minding the house, and making your household a church for God as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”
The hundreds of thousands of Americans who were abroad when the Crunch began found themselves in a very difficult position. Those who were missionaries and tourists were largely forced to hunker down wherever they happened to be. With most airline and ship traffic halted, only a resourceful few, like Andrew Laine, were able to return to the U.S., in the first few years. Most of those who were stranded in non-English-speaking nations were quickly impoverished, and many died. American servicemen deployed overseas didn’t fare much better. Hot spots like Afghanistan and Bosnia (where there was renewed fighting between Christians and Muslims after the Crunch) became untenable death traps for U.S. troops. Cut off from logistical support, they fought on bravely, but eventually their casualties mounted to the point where the units lost integrity.
A few soldiers were able to extract themselves with escape and evasion tactics, but most died from starvation, exposure, illness, wounds, or execution after being captured. Half of the entire U.S. Marine Corps— heavily deployed in Afghanistan—was written off in this manner. The Maynard Hutchings government gave lip service to repatriating its stranded soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but in actuality it mostly did nothing.
There were a few notable exceptions. A contingent of U.S. Air Force technicians working at the solid-state phased-array radar system (SSPARS) at Clear Air Force Station, Alaska, survived two winters of isolation, eating mostly moose and bear meat. After a spring breakup, they loaded up in a mixture of military and civilian vehicles and convoyed to Fairbanks, Alaska. There they found that there was virtually no fuel available and the local populace was starving. With no other alternative, and joined by 372 residents of the Tanana Valley, they marched more than 1,500 miles to Lynden, Washington. What they dubbed “Colonel Haskins’ Hike for Health” took seven months.
La Fuerza ripped into Humboldt, Arizona, like a can opener. They had been in the looting business for so long that they were experts. They knew just how to approach various sorts of houses and businesses. Over time they had learned when to push hard, and when to wait, and how to expertly threaten and intimidate. The size of their force and their warnings via vehicle-mounted bullhorns made most residents panic and flee. They had also gained enough experience through hard knocks to know that when there was a certain threshold of resistance, it was best just to torch a place and consider it a loss. But they never just bypassed a house when there was heavy resistance. That would be a sign of weakness.
The contiguous towns of Humboldt and Dewey were easy targets. The houses were so spread out that they could be taken piecemeal. There was no planned resistance, so individual houses could be taken down sequentially, with little fear of being sniped at from behind. The loot was decent, but in recent months it was getting more and more difficult to find fuel. There were rumors that there was fresh gasoline and diesel being made in the Four Corners. Ignacio Garcia planned to move his force in that direction. His plan was to just pick away at the periphery to get fresh fuel, but not take on the owners of the refinery yet. There would be plenty of time for that.
40. Movement to Contact
“Of every One Hundred men, Ten shouldn’t even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters… We are lucky to have them… They make the battle, Ah, but the One, One of them is a Warrior… and He will bring the others back.”
A low rumbling sound came to Beth’s ears. She looked up from her washboard. It was wash day, and as usual she was doing her laundry scrubbing on the front porch. That way she could dump the gray water directly on her flower beds. The sound was coming from the west. A moment later she identified it: a motorcycle engine. It sounded out of place on Road 4990, which for the past two years mainly had horse traffic. Even though the refinery was just a few miles down the road, gasoline was so precious that it was used very sparingly.
Beth was surprised to see the motorcycle slow down and come to a stop at their front gate. She jumped up and grabbed her M2 Carbine, which was leaning against the door frame behind her. She held the gun at low ready, the way Lars had taught her. The buttplate was tucked into the pocket of her shoulder-a pocket that hadn’t existed just a few months before. Beth had lost nearly 20 pounds since the Crunch began. The austere diet and vigorous outdoor work had quickly brought her weight down to 125 pounds.
With a shout, Beth summoned Lars. He accompanied her to the gate. They approached the county road cautiously. Lars carried his Valmet M62 and Beth had her carbine, both at low ready.
When they were twenty yards from the gate, the man shouted: “Mr. Martin would like to see you, sir, as soon as possible. He said it’s important.”
Lars answered: “Understood.”
The man revved the bike’s engine, turned in a tight circle, and drove back toward the refinery. Lisbeth and Lars gave each other curious looks.
Lars arrived at Martin’s refinery just twenty minutes later. He was impressed to see that their security had not slackened in the three years since the Crunch began.
Seated in his office, L. Roy said, “Thanks for coming, Lars.”
Martin paused, looking a bit anxious, and said, “You once mentioned that you’re Finnish, but your given name is Lars. That’s Norwegian, right?”
“Well, my dad was full-blooded Finnish, and my mom was mostly Swedish: her maiden name was Bardgard. So that’s why I ended up with a Swedish given name and a Finnish surname.
Martin replied, “Oh, I see. I’ve heard that the Finnish language is something unique, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah. The Finns are sorta the black sheep of Scandinavia. The language is completely different from Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, or Danish. It’s what is called a ‘Finno-Ugric’ language. The languages closest to it are Estonian and Hungarian. That’s because-though they don’t like to admit it-the Finns are actually the descendants of the Mongol Hordes. So it’s no wonder that the rest of Scandinavia doesn’t know how to relate to the Finns. It’s like you’re living in the suburbs, and then the Genghis Khan family moves in next door. That was about nine centuries back.”
Laine paused, and then added: “Your man said you had something important to discuss.”
Martin nodded. “Yes. I had a conversation on the forty-meter ham band with a gent in Prescott, Arizona. He said he had a crucial security concern to discuss. Then he made a very unusual request. He asked if we had anyone here that spoke Navajo. I said yes, and just a few minutes later I put one of my Navajo employees on the radio. Then his man and my man started yammering back and forth-you know, like the code talkers that were used back in World War Two.”
Laine nodded.
“Okay, so after the translation was done, here was their message in a nutshell: They said that the big La
