The only available space for Andy to sleep was the forward sail locker. Simms explained why he didn’t empty the seventh berth for Andy: “I’ll still need to get sheets in and out of the sail locker on short notice. And it will be much quicker to get
The yacht was well equipped for long voyages, with a reverse-osmosis water maker, an inflatable dinghy, and an impressive array of radios and navigation gear.
Andy was disappointed to hear that there would be no room for his bicycle and trailer. He was able to trade them to another yachtsman at the marina for eighteen cans of corned beef, five 12-gauge red meteor flares that could be used in Carston’s flare gun, and a three-year-old Garmin GPS receiver.
Andy’s only other transaction before their departure came after he spotted a teenager at the marina who was wearing a camouflage jacket that had some bright paint stains on it. Andy recognized these as paintball stains. Striking up a conversation with the young man, Laine learned that he was an aficionado of both paintball tactical training and shooting Airsoft pellet guns. The latter shot low-velocity rubber BBs. Laine persuaded him to trade a few of his Airsoft guns, since he had eleven of them.
In exchange for two Airsoft submachinegun replicas-an Uzi and an H amp;K MP-5-Laine traded a full set of OCP fatigues with matching boonie hat and
23
Roll Out
“A retreat is a place you go to live, not to die. Setting up a retreat is, for the most part, practicing the art of the possible. It’s a matter of wisely and shrewdly identifying what you have and turning it into something usable . . . Fight if you must, but try your utmost to orchestrate events so that confrontation is absolutely the remedy of last resort.”
Buckeye, Arizona December, the First Year
Once the looting in Phoenix started spreading out into the suburbs, Ian and Blanca agreed that it would be very dangerous to stay in Buckeye much longer.
The next morning they wheeled the Larons out of their trailers. Working in the driveway and on the front lawn, they bolted on the wings. Assembly and preflight testing only took fifteen minutes per plane. But then it took nearly an hour to efficiently stow their gear, with the heavier items as close as possible to the planes’ center of gravity. As all this went on, a number of curious neighbors congregated to stare at the strange sight. Soon a few of them pitched in to help with the fueling process.
Ian handed his next-door neighbor the keys and the “pink slip” titles to his vehicles, and the keys to the house. He told him, “We won’t be back, so you can have anything you’d like inside the house. I don’t know what you should do with the trailers for the planes. I guess you can give these pink slips to my landlord, if you ever see him. He can apply that to our rent and keep the difference.”
Just before they started their engines, Ian asked for volunteers to halt any approaching cars on the adjoining avenue. After starting up and doing another radio check, Ian and Blanca taxied off the lawn and down the driveway. They then continued out the court and turned on to Hastings Avenue, with Ian in the lead. Their neighbors gathered to gawk. There was about two thousand feet of the broad avenue available, which was plenty of runway for the Larons, even in their overloaded condition. Blanca keyed her radio and said, “Be careful-light poles on the left.” Several neighbors stood at the ends of the avenue to watch for approaching cars and, if need be, to block traffic.
The planes staggered off the ground and climbed out eastward very slowly, into the smoky haze that hung over the entire Phoenix region. Ian did a 90-degree turn and slid in to form up alongside Blanca’s Laron. She gave him a thumbs-up.
They turned due north, still climbing. Gazing to the east, Blanca could see house fires burning out of control in Phoenix, Glendale, and even as close as Goodyear. She radioed Ian, “
“Yeah, it looks like we got out of Dodge just in time. After Goodyear, the looters are gonna hit Buckeye sure as anything. Climbing to 7,500, out.”
Ian again looked toward Phoenix. He remembered Charley Gordon and wondered aloud, without pressing the mic switch, “So, what’ll last longer: Charley or the thousand rounds of nine-milly?”
Their eighty-seven-mile flight to Prescott consumed just over seven gallons of avgas for each plane. At the midpoint of their flight, they practiced using Jackrabbit hand pumps in anticipation of longer flights. Refueling their fuel tanks in flight from their fuel bladders took only seven minutes.
After passing over some dramatic yellowish rocky hills on the east shore of Willow Lake, they landed their planes at Love Field, Prescott’s airport. Once on the ground, they taxied to the general aviation area. The fueling area had a large sign spray-painted on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of oriented strand board with a frown face and “No Fuel.” The phones were out, so Ian thought it was best to go directly to Alex’s house.
Ian wangled a ride from the airport-in exchange for twenty-five rounds of 9mm hollowpoints-while Blanca stayed behind to guard the planes. Alex was impressed with the country. Granite Mountain loomed large in the distance. There was obviously more water here than down in the Phoenix area, but this was still Arizona. There were lots of trees here-a scarcity in southern Arizona. The elevation of the town was about 5,500 feet. This gave it a much cooler climate than Buckeye.
There was no answer when Ian knocked on the door of Alex’s rental house on Oak Terrace Drive. Ian discovered that the door was unlocked, and inside there were signs that Alex had left hurriedly. Most of the furniture in the house was still there, but nearly all of Alex’s other personal possessions were missing. The kitchen smelled of sour milk. There was a knock on the door. It was Alex’s next-door neighbor, carrying a baseball bat.
After explaining who he was, Ian learned that Alex had just been hired on as a “full-time security consultant” for four families with adjoining properties in Conley Ranches, a fairly new gated community two miles north of town. Contacting Alex was a snap, once he knew how to do it: CB Channel 12. “They monitor it around the clock.” The neighbor, a former trucker, had a CB radio in his SUV. Alex responded immediately to Ian’s transmission and said that he’d be at his old house in less than half an hour to pick him up.
Alex pulled into the driveway in his Ford Excursion. Ian was carrying no baggage, so he just hopped into the passenger seat and Alex immediately backed out of the driveway. There was a long-barreled Dan Wesson .44 Magnum revolver resting in the center console.
After a palm-slapping high five, Alex asked simply, “Airport?”
“Yep.”
As he drove, Alex explained rapidly, “I got hired as a security guy for a group of four families on contiguous one-acre lots, in a square, on the end of a block. Two of them are retired bankers from Tucson. Strictly a ‘room- and-board’ arrangement. There’s four hundred lots in the development, but less than half of them have houses built: it’s kind of a patchwork, with clusters of houses surrounded by empty lots. Its a bunch of half-million-dollar to million-plus houses there. A lot of retired executives with more money than brains. They watched it all go down on TV, and now they’re scared spitless and playing catch-up.”
Without allowing Ian time to comment, Alex went on: “I think we’ve got food and water covered, but they’re pretty darn light on fuel, and pitiful on security. Some of the families in Conley Ranches don’t even
