Ken grabbed his rifle and stepped to the front door to investigate. An older Ford Bronco pulled into the Prines’ lane and approached the house. The Bronco’s roof had been removed, and its windshield was flipped down and covered with burlap. Two men in camouflage uniforms and wearing Kevlar helmets were in the front seats. As the vehicle got closer to the farmhouse, Ken recognized his friend Tom Kennedy’s vehicle—despite the fact that it was being driven with its windshield flipped down and it had a new cable cutter attached to its front bumper. Then he recognized the faces of Dan Fong and Kevin Lendel. Without hesitation, he ran out to greet them.
Ken was wearing a huge grin as Dan Fong braked the Bronco to a halt and shut down the engine. “What, only two of you came?” Ken joked. “I figured you’d have at least three or four guys.”
Kevin looked down, fighting back tears. Then he replied, “We
He motioned with his thumb at the pair of jungle boots protruding from the end of the rolled-up ponchos.
After a few moments, Kevin blinked his eyes heavily and said in a broken voice, “It’s T.K.”
The expression on Layton’s face melted.
Ken walked back to the tailgate and stared down at Tom Kennedy’s shrouded body. With his voice wavering, Layton said, “If I’d known something like this was going to happen, I’d have never sent word to the retreat. This… this is all my fault.”
Dan shook his head and said, “It wasn’t your fault, dude. It’s rough wherever you go out there. We all knew the risks. But we’re your friends. Some things are a lot more important than your personal safety. It was a matter of honor.”
Ken took some time to stand over Tom Kennedy’s body and pray. Kevin and Dan stood a polite distance away. As Ken turned back toward them, they could see tears running down his cheeks. They shared a three-way hug.
Terry hobbled out the front door of the farmhouse on a pair of homemade crutches. Ken went to her and explained what had happened. “I’ve never been so happy and so sad at the same time before in my life,” he said.
While refueling and packing up the Bronco early the next morning, Kevin Lendel gave the Prine family the sealed plastic buckets of food that they had brought along, as well as four gasoline jerry cans, one of which was still partly full. This provided enough room for the Laytons and their gear. Dan liked the idea of getting rid of the empty gas cans, explaining that emptied gas cans containing vapors were more explosive than full ones.
After making their goodbyes, packing Ken and Terry’s gear was quick and easy. All that they had were their rifles, web gear, ALICE packs, and Terry’s new crutches. Ken and Terry gave the Prines hugs, and they were off. None of them could avoid occasionally looking at T.K.’s shrouded body. It served to subdue what otherwise would have been an animated conversation.
As they began their drive, Dan Fong explained what had happened. “We ran into two looter roadblocks on the way down here. T.K. got shot when we got stopped at the second one. Not much more to say, except that we snuck back there that same night, and made those SOBs pay for it.”
The trip to Todd Gray’s ranch near Bovill, Idaho, was uneventful. From the experience of their trip down, Dan and Kevin knew how to pick their return route to avoid trouble. More than halfway home, they made a cold camp about ten miles from where they had camped two nights before. They consciously avoided using the same spot twice.
Todd’s ranch was just as the Laytons had remembered it. The undulating hills of the eastern Palouse region were here mostly covered by timber. Everyone at the retreat house ran outdoors for what turned out to be a bittersweet reunion.
They buried T.K. the next day.
Bloomfield, New Mexico
June, the Third Year
L. Roy Martin, who owned the Bloomfield Refinery, formed a resistance cell. Martin had been disgusted to see the Provisional Government act like errand boys for the United Nations, bowing to their every demand. It sickened him to see the nation’s sovereignty discarded for the sake of convenience and exigency. With service experience as an Army Strategic Communications (STRATCOM) officer, L. Roy thought that his skills could best be used to help develop signals intelligence for the Resistance. As a man of action, it was just a short step for him to transition from his hobby of monitoring the radio spectrum haphazardly for his own interest to monitoring it actively and systematically to gather intelligence for the Resistance.
As the UNPROFOR army approached New Mexico, L. Roy moved his amateur radio equipment to a thirty- foot-long CONEX overseas shipping container near the back of the refinery complex. This became a Communications Intelligence (COMINT) intercept and analysis facility. Martin and his men bolted equipment racks to the walls in case the CONEX ever had to be moved in a hurry.
Martin led a team of five ham radio operators, a traffic analyst, and three courier runners who manned the CONEX container mini–field station twenty-four hours a day, gathering and summarizing signals intelligence. Their summaries were then relayed to other resistance organizations via the couriers, mainly using USB thumb drives. On rare occasions, they also sent some urgent messages via encrypted packet radio from vehicle-mounted ham rigs. When they did so, they were always careful to be in motion and at least fifteen miles away from the intercept site whenever they transmitted. They didn’t want to become the victims of their counterparts within the UNPROFOR.
The gear inside the field station CONEX included a pair of R-390A HF receivers, two Sherwood SE-3 synchronous detectors, four hardwired demodulators, a half dozen multiband scanners, several digital audio recorders, two spectrum analyzers, and seven laptop computers that were loaded with demodulators, digital recorders, and decryption/encryption software.
In the back of the CONEX was a large map board with United States and Four Corners region maps and a large whiteboard. The whiteboard was used by the traffic analyst (or “TA”). His job was to analyze the “externals” of the message traffic, to try to determine the relationships between the units and their missions—namely, who was subordinate to whom, and hopefully from this more about their locales, intentions, and order of battle. His references were the U.S. Army’s TA-103 Traffic Analyst course book, and the Air Force Security Command (AFSC) Radio Traffic Analysis (RTA) manual, which had both been declassified just a few years before the Crunch.
The AC power for the field station—to run the radios, lights, and heater/air conditioner—came from the refinery’s co-generated power, but it could just as well have used grid power, or power from mobile generators. It was also possible to use less stable power from generators because everything in the CONEX except the air conditioner and heater used “cleaned up” power. This was accomplished by passing the current through an uninterruptable power supply (UPS).
Martin had his dipole and sloper antennas rigged so that they could rapidly be disassembled and hidden. He had “MTBE,” “MSDS #3557,” and “Toxic—Keep Out” spray-stenciled on the CONEX’s doors in large letters. Below, a sign in smaller print read:
Warning: Methyl tert-butyl Ether (MTBE). EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE—EYE AND MUCOUS MEMBRANE IRRITANT—AFFECTS CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM—HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED— ASPIRATION HAZARD. Do not open this container unless wearing respirator and protective suit! Per MSDS 3557: High fire hazard. Keep away from heat, spark, open flame, and other ignition sources.
Contact may cause eye, skin, and mucous membrane irritation. Avoid prolonged breathing of vapors or mists. Inhalation may cause irritation, anesthetic effects (dizziness, nausea, headache, intoxication), and respiratory system effects. If ingested, do NOT induce vomiting, as this may cause chemical pneumonia (fluid in the lungs).
The team left a dozen empty 55-gallon drums sitting just outside the CONEX doors. These drums also had convincing-looking MTBE markings stenciled on them and they all had their bungs sealed shut. In the event that the team had to camouflage their operation from officials, they could pile up the barrels just inside the door, blocking the view of the electronic racks and chairs, which sat farther back, behind a blackout curtain. A pint can of paint thinner was kept handy, so that the floor inside the doors could be doused to give the CONEX a convincing
