Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

7 THE CROSSING

Phil’s drive across the Snoqualmie Pass was nerve-racking. Though the pass was clear of ice and snow, there was heavy traffic, of all descriptions, heading east. Overloaded vehicles were the norm. He noticed that many drivers were hunched up close to their steering wheels, looking tense.

Although it would have been far more direct to take Interstate 5 north to British Columbia, he knew from AM radio reports that the border crossings had at least a three-hour delay. And of course the guns that he was carrying would have put him in handcuffs immediately, given Canada’s draconian gun laws.

He was heading for the town of Oroville, Washington. Normally a five-hour drive via the Snoqualmie Pass and Highway 97, it took him nearly seven hours with the heavy traffic in the first stretch. The traffic had lightened up considerably north of Wenatchee, and it was almost normal when he got north of Omak.

As he drove, he punched the radio’s Seek button regularly and often switched from AM to FM, trying to catch as much news as possible. Reports were filled with frightening incidents of galloping inflation, large-scale street protests and riots in most major American cities, emergency executive orders, bank closures, and a full-scale panic on Wall Street.

He knew that Oroville was along a “porous” stretch of the border that had often been used by narcotics smugglers. Four years earlier, he had investigated an industrial espionage case where a set of mil-spec composite aircraft wing tooling had been smuggled across that stretch of border, destined for mainland China. The perpetrators were never caught, but Phil had filed the border crossing location away in his memory as a useful tidbit.

He arrived in Oroville late in the day, and low on fuel.

As he waited his turn in the long queue at the Cenex gas station, he removed his Garmin GPS receiver from its dashboard bracket. He programmed the leftmost loop of Meadowlark Road into the GPS. After twenty minutes in line, he reached the pump and was horrified to see gasoline priced at twenty-eight dollars per gallon and CASH ONLY. Despite the high cost, he filled his tank completely. The 26.5 gallons cost him $742. There were police officers responding to some sort of scuffle inside the station’s convenience store, so he didn’t dare go in.

The new routine at the station was interesting: Gasoline was no longer self-serve. Since the digits on the pump’s display couldn’t accommodate more than $9.99 per gallon, they had it marked “$2.80,” with a handwritten sign above that read: MULTIPLIED BY 10. An attendant carrying an FRS walkie-talkie would approach each car near the head of the line to preapprove it to buy gas or diesel, which meant showing him at least five hundred dollars in cash. Then, once at the pump, payment was demanded in advance. Meanwhile, an armed security guard stood by, holding a Mossberg shotgun and watching the proceedings closely.

Phil timed his arrival at the border for precisely 5:00 P.M. He hoped this would coincide with a shift change for border patrol agents on both sides of the border, so there would be a lower chance of encountering a patrol vehicle. All that stood between him and Canada was one hundred yards of grassy meadow and a three-strand barbed-wire fence in the middle of it.

Across the border was a web of roads that had been punched in and graveled for a housing development that never happened because of the economic downturn that began in 2008.

Phil’s hands were shaking as he walked to the fence, holding a pair of compound aircraft snips. These high-leverage cutters made quick work of the fence wire. Heavily tensioned, the wires whipped back as they were cut just to the right of a cedar pole H-brace. (He realized that someone would eventually have to repair the fence to prevent cattle from becoming illegal aliens. Cutting it there would make retensioning the fence wires much easier for whoever did the repair.) The T-posts were spaced twelve feet apart, so it wasn’t difficult to fit his pickup through the gap in the fence. He eased the pickup forward and across the uneven pasture ground, whistling nervously. He wondered about cameras and sensors but trusted that the law of averages was on his side.

Only ten minutes later he was driving through Osoyoos, British Columbia. He didn’t dawdle, but he was careful to observe the speed limit signs. He wanted to be outside of the fifty-mile-wide border enforcement zone as soon as possible.

His GPS trip planner estimated a 630-mile drive to reach his destination of Bella Coola, which would take about thirteen hours in normal driving conditions.

Reaching the point of exhaustion, he pulled onto a small road that went into Crown land. He followed the road for several hundred yards and then pulled off on a logging road, where his pickup could not be seen.

Shutting down the engine, he assessed his situation: He’d apparently made his border crossing undetected. The gas gauge read just over a half tank. He didn’t have any Canadian currency, but he did have a handful of pre-1965 U.S. silver quarters and dimes, as well as one half-ounce Canadian Maple Leaf gold coin that he’d bought during a dip in precious metals prices in late 2013. He prayed that it would be enough to get him to the McGregors’ ranch.

Phil spent a fitful night trying to sleep in the cramped cab of his pickup, with his sleeping bag draped around him. He was still feeling tense from his journey, and it was also chilly. Worried about wasting precious fuel, he didn’t start the engine to run the pickup’s heater. In the end, he got only about four hours of sleep. At first light, he stepped out of the cab and relieved his bladder.

As he continued west of Kamloops, it was obvious that he was in an Indian tribal region. The local Indians, called “Aboriginal,” “Indigenous First People,” or “First Nations Peoples” in British Columbia, were hardworking and fairly self-sufficient. But the same signs of neglect that characterized tribal housing in U.S. reservations were obvious here. Many houses had wrecked cars up on blocks in their front yards.

On an empty stretch of Highway 97, he spotted a GMC pickup abandoned by the side of the road. He backed up and stopped to look at it. The truck had obviously been stripped. An orange adhesive Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) MOTOR VEHICLE ACT DERELICT NOTICE sticker was on the windshield, with a July date, and two initialed updates in August and September. The pickup was missing its passenger-side door, tailgate, spare tire, and two wheels. The hood was raised. Phil walked over to it and leaned in to see that the radiator, fan, and water pump had also been stripped from the engine.

Walking around to the back of the truck, he saw that the license plate was still there, and that its inspection sticker was valid for another seven months. That sticker, he surmised, was what had kept the truck from being towed away, to date. He used his Leatherman tool and removed the screws from the license plates. Carrying the plates to his truck, he debated whether it would be safer for him to continue to travel with his Washington plates or to switch to the BC plates.

Just before reaching the town of Cache Creek, he pulled onto a quiet side road and switched the plates. He continued on, and then stopped at a Shell Canada gas station. His GPS travel planner told him that gas stations would be few and far between for the rest of his drive to the Bella Coola region. A large hand-painted sign declared: NO GAS—SORRY.

He pulled up to the pump and was greeted by an elderly First Nations man, who was wearing jeans and a stained Edmonton Oilers logo sweatshirt with frayed cuffs.

The man said, “We’re closed.”

“How about if I pay you in gold?”

“Nuggets? Some of them is fakes.”

“No, this.” He held up the half-ounce gold coin, tilting it intentionally to reflect the glint of the rising sun. He had it turned so that the Maple Leaf logo side of the coin faced the man.

The old man smiled and came over to examine the coin. He exclaimed in the Chinook jargon, “Skookum!” (This was one Chinook word that reached deep into the interior of Canada.)

Phil nodded and said, “I only need half a tank, but this is a half-ouncer, so that’s enough gold for at least a couple of fifty-five-gallon drums.”

“I’ll trade you that half tank, plus thirty-five gallons in cans.”

Phil shook his head, still smiling, and said, “A half a tank, plus thirty-five gallons in cans, plus ten silver quarters in change would make it square. Have you got any Caribous minted between 1952 and 1967—the eighty percent silver kind?”

The old man scratched his chin and said, “Yeah, but do you know what five-gallon cans—empty cans—are selling for these days? They’re plenty scarce. Right now I’d rather trade you more silver Caribous than I would gas cans.”

Phil grinned and said, “That’s my offer—I’m sticking to it.”

The old man laughed and said, “Okay. Huy-huy. You got yourself a trade.”

The odd assortment of gas cans fit in the bed of the pickup only after some gear was moved to the rear driver’s-side seat. There simply wasn’t room for one bin, so Phil unpacked it and wedged all of its contents into nooks and crannies both in the cab and in the bed of the pickup. As Phil did so, the old man noticeably ogled the ammo cans and gun cases but didn’t say anything about them.

Of the seven fuel cans, no two were alike. Some of the gas cans looked ancient, while others were fairly new plastic containers. One of them had the annoying CARB-compliant nozzle, which had been mandated in recent years, but the station owner assured him that none of them were “leakers.” In a separate transaction, by trading back one of the silver Canadian quarters, Phil got an assortment of nozzles so that he’d have one for each type of can.

Now confident that he’d have more than enough gas to get him to the ranch, Phil set off again. The old man waved good-bye with his right hand, while his left hand was thrust into his front pocket, clasping the gold coin.