General Olds stated forthrightly, “I’ve concluded that the ProvGov and the UN peacekeepers are doomed, for four reasons. First, as we’ve discussed before, they’ve overextended their reach and have thereby spread their forces too thin. Second, they are being confronted by a guerrilla army of resistance that is leaderless, so it cannot be isolated and eliminated. Third, like the Nazis in World War II, they’ve embarked on a campaign of mass arrests and reprisal killings, which is alienating any support that they might have once enjoyed. And lastly, they’ve attempted to disarm the populace. That is an idiotic and futile endeavor.”
“I agree that their goal is futile,” Andy said. “Before the Crunch, we were a nation of, as I recall, around 328 million people, with around 250 million guns. There were 4.5 million guns manufactured each year, but meanwhile fewer than one million guns were worn out, exported, or melted down in those stupid ‘turn in your gun for concert tickets’ programs. Who would be so moronic as to trade their birthright for a gift certificate from Toys-R-Us? But now, after the big die-off, we are a nation of perhaps 100 million people, still with around 250 million guns. There is absolutely
25. El Tesoro
“Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we’d call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that’s exactly what thieves do—redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders’ vision, it’s a sin in the eyes of God.”
Near Sedona, Arizona
May, the Fourth Year
Ignacio Garcia’s looter gang, La Fuerza, had gone mobile just as the Crunch began, cutting a swath from near Houston, west across Texas, through southern New Mexico and Arizona. Garcia’s gang had specialized in invading small towns and stripping them clean. One of their trademarks was using armored cars, both former bank transport armored cars, and wheeled military surplus armored personnel carriers (APCs). At its peak, Garcia’s looter gang was a small army, numbering 212 with fifty-three vehicles.
La Fuerza was quite successful until they reached the vicinity of Prescott, Arizona. There, a group of local citizens bolstered by a small contingent from New Mexico carried out a daring nighttime raid on Humboldt and Dewey, Arizona, with Molotov cocktail firebombs, destroying all of their armored vehicles and half of their unarmored ones. In the raid forty-four of the gang members were killed or wounded.
A retaliatory raid on Prescott—in which nearly every building in the city was burned—cost the lives of another forty-seven gang members. Soon after that, seven members left the gang. They stole away in the night, in two groups.
North of Williams, Arizona
June, the Fourth Year
Three weeks after burning Prescott, Ignacio decided to cache all his precious metals and gemstones. With just his wife and his trusted lieutenant, Tony, he drove four miles off Highway 64 into federally owned rangeland that his maps showed was administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
They found a rusted abandoned tractor frame that looked like it had been there for more than fifty years to use as a landmark. He wrote down the GPS coordinates. Then he stretched a piece of twine from the tractor’s steering column to a large, distinctive boulder 100 feet away. With a tape measure he measured exactly forty feet down the string from the tractor and scratched a large X on the ground with the tip of a digging bar. They brought a pick and two shovels from the pickup and started to dig.
The dry, rocky soil made digging difficult. Ignacio’s original plan had been to dig a hole five feet deep. But as the day warmed up and blisters began to form, he revised his plan to dig a trench just two feet deep. The gold and platinum coins as well as a large assortment of jewelry and gemstones had already been packed in eighteen U.S. military surplus .50 caliber ammo cans. The greatest value was in loose diamonds and diamond wedding rings. Garcia’s wife had lost count at just over 300 stones, so she estimated that there were at least 350 diamonds. The cans were so heavy that they were difficult for a man to lift and carry.
Before placing the cans in the hole, Ignacio opened them and applied a coating of Vaseline to the rubber gaskets on their lids. After taking a few minutes to admire his treasure (
He wrote down the precise GPS coordinates for both the tractor and the cache on two pieces of paper. He then trimmed them to the size of business cards and laminated them on both sides with clear packing tape. He had his wife sew one of these into the lining of her fur coat, and one into his leather belt.
In June, Garcia’s gang drove into Colorado, following their time-proven hit-and-run tactics. They gathered trucks and vans to replace some of the vehicles lost in the Humboldt and Dewey, Arizona, fiasco.
In each town they hit, they began to hear more and more about the ProvGov. Generally called the Federals—or as Garcia’s men termed them,
One of Garcia’s men approached him and said, “These
Garcia shook his head. “Not if we become security contractors. As contractors, we’ll just have to give up a little piece of what we take, but we’ll have
So they dubbed themselves Force Two Associates, or simply F2. Carlos, who had been a graffiti tagger before he’d joined La Fuerza, cut a handsome sixteen-inch-tall “F2” stencil for painting the doors, hoods, and tailgates of their trucks. They used glossy black spray paint. Some of the camp followers carefully embroidered the F2 logo on some stolen tan baseball caps to match.
Negotiating with the regional administrator at Fort Carson went rapidly. Garcia quickly hammered out a mutually acceptable charter. The UNPROFOR’s cut was 20 percent of all loot. The regional administrator took a further personal commission of 2 percent, although that was not mentioned in the charter contract. But he made it clear that if he didn’t get his cut, in gold, he would leave Garcia twisting in the wind.
Fort Knox, Kentucky
September, the Third Year
To Andy, joining the New Army seemed simultaneously familiar and strange. For example, when he drew his issue of field gear, it was still called “TA-50” gear, but it was an odd assortment of field gear that included a set of U.S. interceptor body armor (IBA), a German sleeping bag, a Dutch tent, Belgian waterproof over-boots and parka, a French backpack, and a battered Russian mess kit. At the same time, he was handed a chit for an “Article 4 Exemption” Hardigg locker. This, he was told, could be picked up at the Army Community Service (ACS) and Army Emergency Relief (AER) Outreach Office on Binter Street. The ACS office was not far from the Commissary and Exchange stores. It seemed strange to him that the ACS charity would issue a piece of military equipment.
Andy drove to the ACS/AER office on his lunch hour. As he entered the building, he walked by two contract civilian security guards who were armed with laser-mounted M4s. The men were lounging in overstuffed chairs in
