Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 8 M-C-Ls

Most of the coffee—all except for a small “emergency” reserve—ran out in January. Lisa Nelson was the one most vocal about it. As she was making one of her last cups of coffee with a miniature packet of Taster’s Choice that she’d scrounged out of an MRE, she quipped, “I was mentally prepared for a world without electricity, or refrigeration, or gasoline. I was ready for the rioting, the worthless greenbacks, and the umpteen uncertainties. But life without French Roast? Now that’s a tragedy of epic proportions.”

The monotony of winter, with its interminably boring and chilly shifts of LP/OP duty, was broken on the afternoon of February twelfth. Dan Fong was on duty on the LP/OP. He called in a terse message on the TA-1: “Deliberate, front. Two men. Armed. Pushing a cart. From the east. Five-hundred meters, moving slowly.”

All of the members of the group knew the drill. They had practiced both hasty and deliberate ambushes dozens of times in the last three months. Todd, T.K., Mary, Mike, Lisa, and Jeff sprinted down the draw to their positions.

Kevin and Rose stayed behind to “hold the fort.” Meanwhile, Dan held his position at the LP/OP, which served the double duty of overlooking the ambush site. His job was to take out anyone who tried to maneuver behind and outflank the ambusher’s positions. They had been in their freezing spider holes for what seemed an eternity but was in fact only five minutes when they heard Mike blow his whistle. In unison, they popped their heads and shoulders out of their holes, and pointed their weapons at the road. Still a cop at heart, Mike yelled:“Freeze, or you’re dead men!”

Ten minutes earlier, two young men, one tall and angular, the other short and overweight, were trudging along the county road at a snail’s pace. Both carried heavy packs, and it was the short man’s turn to push the cart. He whined, “David, my pack’s too heavy and my shoulders are killing me. I’ve just got to get rid of some of this weight.”

“Just shut up and deal with it, Larry,” the tall man replied. “You’re always complaining. Do you hear me complain? My pack’s just as heavy as yours.”

They continued down the road. The only sounds were the crunch of the frozen gravel beneath their feet, and the steady rhythm of their breathing.

Approaching a side road that looked like dozens of others they had passed before, they heard a shrill whistle. A moment later, four men and two women armed with riot shotguns and assault rifles sprang as if by magic from underneath the “junk” by the side of the road.

When ordered to freeze, they did exactly as they were told. “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” Larry exclaimed, as he dropped the handle of the cart.

“Drop the rifles!” Mike Nelson ordered. Without hesitating, Larry and David shrugged their slung rifles off of their shoulders, sending them clattering to the frozen ground. “Now the packs,” Nelson commanded. They complied just as quickly. With a flick of the muzzle of his rifle, Mike gestured and said,

“Now you—the gun belt.” It too hit the ground with an unceremonious thud.

“Put your hands on top of your heads and step back five paces, then kneel upright.” They followed Nelson’s command. Once they were on their knees, Mike added, “Now cross one leg over the other.”

“We’re just refugees, we don’t mean any harm. We’re just passing through,” David cried feebly.

“That remains to be seen.”Without turning his head, Nelson ordered, “Jeff! Frisk them.”

With that, Trasel set down his Remington riotgun, and jumped out of his spider hole at the far west end of the kill zone. He then circled behind the two “refugees.”

Trasel methodically searched the two men. He even had them take off their boots. All that he discovered in his search were some empty candy wrappers, one pack of cigarettes, a twenty-round Mini-14 magazine loaded with hollow point ammunition, a disposable lighter, two pocket knives, and two spoons.

Neither man carried a wallet. Jeff threw the contents of their pockets into a pile a good distance away from the two men. “They’re clean now,” Jeff reported, as he stepped aside.

By a prearranged SOP, Mike and T.K. got out of their positions shortly after Jeff got back into his. T.K. questioned the two strangers while Mike began to search their gear. “Where are you from, guys?” T.K. asked with a friendly voice.

“Denver!” blurted out Larry.

“Denver, huh? That’s a long way off. You didn’t walk all that way, did you?”

“No, we drove until we couldn’t find gas, and ran out. We’ve been on foot for more than a month. Look, we’re not looking for any hassles. If it’s money you’re after, David and I can give you some. Just let us go!”

“We’re not interested in your money, or your possessions—we don’t steal from anyone—we’re just interested in fully knowing your intentions,” T.K. retorted. He breathed deeply and went on, “Now then, we are going to find out just what you are up to….”

David broke in, “That’s not your job. You don’t—you don’t—have any right to take the law into your own hands.”

“The only law left, at least around here, is in the chamber of this little persuader,” T.K. mused, patting the top handguard of his CAR-15.

Mike looked at their guns first. One rifle was a Remington Model 700 bolt-action chambered in .270 Winchester. It was equipped with a three-to-nine power adjustable Leupold scope. The other rifle was a Ruger Mini-14, loaded with what appeared to be a forty-round magazine. Mike had never seen a magazine for a Mini-14 of such prodigious capacity before. He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled to himself, “I suppose it would work, but how would you get into a good prone position using it? How useless.”

The handgun, which was still strapped into a fancy tooled western style holster, appeared at first to be a Colt .45 “Peacemaker.” On closer inspection, it was in fact an original Colt single action, but chambered in .357 magnum. It had a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Mike had once read that some “third generation” Colt single actions were made in .357, but he had heretofore not yet encountered one. All three of the guns were fully loaded. Next, Mike shifted his attention to the packs.

For a few uncomfortable moments, T.K. stood exchanging nervous glances with the two strangers. Their gaze was broken when Mike exclaimed, “Holy crud, look at this.” He held up two baseball shaped grenades that he had found in the outer pockets of one of the packs. He closely examined the yellow markings on the green painted grenades. “These are live frags all right. There’s six of them here. Four of them are still in cardboard shipping tubes with the paper tape seals intact.”

“What are we going to do, Mikey, call the BAT-Fags on them?” T.K. asked with a chuckle. After a few moments, he added, “I suppose if they didn’t rob or kill anybody to get them, there’s no law left to say that they can’t have a half a dozen ’lil old M26 frags. What else do they have in those packs?”

Mike let out a slow whistle as he poured out a large jumble of coins, wristwatches, gold chains, rings, and bracelets from a heavy sack. He gave a brief, matter-of-fact inventory. “They’ve got the whole gamut here. Silver dollars, Krugerrands, Pandas, Maple Leafs, a couple of Platinum Isle of Man Nobles, and a Platinum Koala. The watches look like they are mainly Rolexes and Tag Heuers. A lot of ’em still have price tags hanging on them.”

With an odd lilt to his voice, T.K. asked, “I suppose that you’re going to tell me that you owned all that stuff before the Schumer hit the fan? Let me guess… you were in the jewelry business.”

“Look, look, we can explain, we found all that….” Larry said, peevishly.

T.K. frowned.

“Shut up, Larry,” David muttered under his breath.

In a sharper voice, Kennedy mocked, “Oh no, let’s let Larry tell us where you ‘found’ all those valuables.”

Silence.

“Where were you two heading?”

More silence.

“All right, step back from the road toward me five paces and sit down. Leave your hands on your heads. We’re going to have us a little talk,” T.K. said.

The two strangers did as they were told. T.K. backed up at the same time, so that the strangers would not close the distance that divided them. After the two men had sat down on the ground, T.K lowered himself into a squat, with his CAR-15 resting across his knees. Watching these proceedings, Mary leaned over to Todd in the hole next to hers, and commented, “There’s nothing lower than looters.”

Todd replied with a nod.

Mike, still digging through the two strangers’ packs, started reeling off an inventory of ammunition that he had found:“Two and a half boxes of .270, a bandoleer of 5.56 mm ball, about forty rounds of .357 magnum, ten rounds of .38 special bird shot, and six loaded twenty-round mags for the Mini-14.

Three of them are loaded with ball, the other three are loaded with hollow points.” Next, he held up and waved six English copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Nelson commented dryly, “Looks like these two are a little leftward leaning.”

“Are you communists?” T.K. asked.

Larry nodded yes, while David nodded no.

T.K. spat out, “Let’s get our act together, shall we? If you can’t give me straight answers, we might just have to trade off and question you in continuous shifts. It might get a bit cold out here tonight.”

“We’re both party members,” Larry announced. “We joined in college….”

“Shut up, Larry,” David cursed again, louder this time.

“Oh no, let Larry talk. If you can explain yourselves satisfactorily, we’ll let you go on your merry way, or on your Long March, or whatever it is you want to call it. We aren’t interested in your politics. That is your own business and none of ours. It has no bearing on the determination that we are trying to make,” T.K said.

Both David and Larry got perceptibly more nervous when Mike shifted his attention away from the backpacks to the cart. It was a typical two-wheeled garden cart, much like the Grays’, equipped with bicycle tires. It was covered by a small blue plastic tarp held down with bungee cords.

Looking at the cart, David said anxiously, “That’s just our food. You don’t have to search that.”

Undaunted, Mike continued his task, taking off the bungee cords one at a time. “They’ve got a lot of canned food.” Mike stacked the cans into a growing pile on the ground. He described:“Beef stew, chili, peas, pork and beans, string beans, and some dog food.”

Todd joked with Mary, “I wonder if it’s Dinki Dee?”

Mary gave him a puzzled look.

“Don’t you remember, Max and his dog from The Road Warrior?”

Mary flashed a grin of recognition, and then giggled, “Oh yeah, now I remember. All that he had to eat was cases of dog food.”

Mike spoke again, “What, did you sweet guys shoot a poor little Bambi?” he queried, holding up a plastic bag of raw meat. “Or did you just pick out some farmer’s fat little calf to shoot?”

Larry started to cry.

Nelson continued unloading the cart, pulling out a large sack of potatoes.

“It’s a good thing that it’s so cold, otherwise all your fresh meat would have spoiled in a heartbeat.” Mike stopped talking abruptly, and doubled-over, vomiting uncontrollably.

“What the…?” T.K. exclaimed. He got up from his crouch, and walked toward Mike and the cart. Mike could not talk while retching. T.K. looked puzzled, and then glanced into the bottom of the cart. There, he saw that Mike had just uncovered a clear plastic bag containing three small human legs and four small human arms. He turned back toward the two strangers with an iron look on his face and walked toward them. T.K. flipped the selector switch of his CAR-15 past the semiautomatic position and around to the full-auto position. Still walking toward them, he fired two long bursts, emptying the magazine in his weapon. Both men toppled to the ground, stitched with bullets.

With a glazed look in his eyes, T.K. punched the magazine release on his carbine, dropping the duplexed pair of magazines from the magazine well into his waiting hand. Shifting the magazines to the left, he inserted the still-loaded magazine of the pair, and slapped the bolt carrier release with the base of his left palm. He took two steps forward, and again fired another entire magazine on full auto in long bursts, the muzzle pointed almost straight downward.

“Save your ammo, Tom, they’re already very dead!” yelled Mike.

Kennedy replied with his lower lip quivering, “They’ll never be dead enough, damned murdering cannibal looters.”With that, he turned and began walking unsteadily back up the hill to the house, leaving the others in stunned silence. Instinctively, T.K. reloaded his now smoking carbine from one of the thirty-round magazine pouches on his web gear as he walked. Mary was the most startled of them all. Even with all of her experience in the medical field, she had never actually watched anyone die, much less blasted into oblivion only a few yards away. It was also the first time that she had ever heard T.K. curse.

The members of the group drew lots to determine who was going to clean up the mess. The unlucky pair of short dowels were drawn by Jeff Trasel and Kevin Lendel. They spent most of the afternoon hauling the dead strangers’ gear up the hill, inventorying it, and cleaning and oiling the captured weapons.

The looters’ equipment, with the exception of the garden cart, fit into one wall locker that Todd and Mary emptied out.

Kevin volunteered to dig a hole and bury the looters’ cargo of “meat.” He felt queasy when handling it, but managed not to vomit. With Todd’s okay, Jeff and Kevin went ahead with their idea of displaying the bodies. With considerable effort, they used a come-along to hoist the bodies onto two adjacent power poles, securing them with wraps of WD-1 commo wire. They wore surgical gloves when handling the bodies and the “meat.” Mary painted signs on scraps of plywood to hang around their necks. The signs read, “Murdering Cannibal Looter.” They left the frozen bodies up for five weeks before cutting them down and burying them beneath the garden plot.

In a meeting that evening, the Group first said prayers for the victims of the cannibals. Then they were confronted with the dilemma of what to do with the dead men’s equipment. Lisa Nelson pointed out the fact that much or nearly all of it was probably stolen. The options suggested were: one, keep the gear and divide it equally among the group; two, wait until order was restored and donate it to a charity, preferably one dedicated to refugees; and three, distribute it as charity to refugees as they passed through the area, based on legitimate need. Todd called for a vote. T.K made an objection to a voice vote or a show of hands. He called for an “Australian ballot,” the term typically used by the Group when referring to a secret, written ballot.

When the vote was tallied, it came in overwhelmingly for donating the gear and booty to charity after some order was restored. A second vote, this one with a show of hands, was taken to make an exception of the Mini-14 carbine, its ammo, and accessories. Dan Fong had made the motion, suggesting that it would make a good weapon for Rose.

The motion was voted down after Lisa mentioned that she felt that to take something from a looter for one’s own use was only one notch above the act of looting itself. Dan was visibly upset. “It’s a perfectly good weapon. Do you think that it’s somehow been jinxed? It’s an inanimate piece of steel. It’s incapable of being good or evil. It’s just like any other tool. Any good or bad intentions are up to its owner. You can use a hammer to build a house—or to bash in someone’s skull. The hammer doesn’t decide that. The man who owns the hammer does.”

T.K. settled the issue by offering to give Rose his CAR-15. He would instead begin carrying his other .223, an AR-15 that he had “parted up”

himself for rifle matches. This weapon was by far the most expensive AR-15 in the group. T.K. built it using a commercial Eagle Arms lower-receiver, a Colt flat-top M16A2 upper receiver with a A.R.M.S. “Swan Sleeve” rear sight, and a heavy air-gauged Krieger match barrel. He also had two scope bases for the rifle. One mounted a Zeiss 4-12x scope. The other was equipped with an Armson O.E.G. reflex sight.

After the meeting, Dan apologized to T.K. for losing his temper. Before he left, he handed Kennedy a Ziploc bag containing his spare set of M16 lower-receiver parts and auto-sear. He put in with a smile, “In the future, try to keep it to nice controlled, short three-to-five-round bursts. It sounded like a rerun of The Untouchables down there this morning.”

On March twentieth, Jeff announced that he and Rose wanted to get married. He said forthrightly, “We’ve been living in sin, and we’ve repented.”

Later that same day, the entire Group gathered in the living room. Tom Kennedy led the service. He began with a long opening prayer. He asked for God’s guidance for Jeff and Rose, for God as the Great Physician to restore Rose’s strength, and as usual, for God’s protection of everyone at the retreat.

Then Rose and Jeff joined hands. Addressing them by their Christian names, he asked them to exchange their vows. Jeff promised to “love, honor, cherish, provide for, and protect” Rose, and she in turn promised to “love, honor, cherish, and obey” Jeff.

Tom then mentioned the lack of a marriage license, but explained, “I don’t know how the states ever got involved in the marriage business to begin with.

A piece of paper doesn’t make you married. It doesn’t truly grant rights or privileges. The covenant that we have all just witnessed is what matters. That’s the marriage. Marriage is a holy covenant between a man and a woman, in obedience to God’s law. You are now, in the sight of God and those gathered here, and under the Common Law, man and wife.”

Soon after Todd and Mary bought their house in Idaho, they started making some changes. First, they installed a metal firewood chute that fed into the basement. It put the wood supply in close proximity to the stove.

The next upgrade was the construction of a new wood storage house. It was big enough to store three full cords of wood. Todd opted for an open-sided wood house of pole frame construction with a corrugated metal shed type roof. When combined with the wood storage capacity of the basement, the Grays would have enough wood for at least three winters.

At Mary’s insistence, the Grays got a dog soon after moving in. Mary had always wanted a dog, but with their former house lot measured in square feet rather than acres, they didn’t think it would be a humane way to treat a dog.

After long deliberation, they decided to get a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Their decision-making process on selecting a dog breed first narrowed the field to the hound family. From Mary’s research, they learned that nearly all the members of the hound family make good watchdogs. Most of them also have good noses for scent trailing. Based on individual breed’s attributes, the selection was narrowed to either a Black and Tan coonhound, Redbone coonhound, or Rhodesian Ridgeback. Todd and Mary finally selected the Ridgeback because it was more aggressive than the other breeds. Rhodesian Ridgebacks, first bred in Africa for lion hunting, have a few odd features. First, and most noticeably, they have a crest of fur along their backbones that lays down in the opposite direction than the rest of their fur, “against the grain,” as Todd put it.

This was how the breed got the name Ridgeback. Secondly, Ridgebacks have an odd habit of climbing trees. Lastly, and as Todd and Mary were to find out after they bought their puppy, Ridgebacks tend to be strong willed, if not downright stubborn. Luckily, with both Todd and Mary around the farm at all times, they could give their puppy constant supervision until it was fully grown and had gained emotional maturity.

Their puppy, a bitch, came from a breeder near Boise. The pup was a reddish-brown color, with a small white patch on her chest, and one white paw. The white paw constituted a flaw that put the pup in the “pet” category, rather than the “show” category. It also meant that the pup cost three hundred dollars rather than the normal thousand dollars or more. Mary picked the name “Shona” for the pup. Shona was a reference to the language of the Mashona tribe in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia.

Although Shona was strictly an “outdoor” bitch, she was affectionate and very much a part of the family. She was also a vigilant watchdog. To the Grays’ dismay, Shona’s concept of protecting the farm included running off any wild game that ventured onto the property. This included deer, elk, pheasants, grouse, quail, chuckars, and occasionally, bears. Eventually, Shona’s bad habit was broken. An exception was made for bears. Todd and Mary praised Shona liberally when she scared off her first bear. Luckily, Shona was bright enough to distinguish between wanted and unwanted creatures.

To make Shona comfortable during Bovill’s cold winters, Todd spent a day and a half building a doghouse. The doghouse had an unusual design. Todd made it with double walls, with two thicknesses of foam insulation between the inner and outer plywood walls. This insulation went in all four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The doghouse was built on foot-long cedar stilts to keep it up off the ground. This prevented rotting and kept it warm. For a door, Todd made a flap from a scrap of carpet. An old blanket was folded up inside for Shona to sleep on. Shona appeared to like her house, but she seemed to spend more time on top of the house’s gently sloping roof than she did inside it. As expected, this phenomenon changed radically when the first cold snap arrived.

Todd and Mary continued their “upgrades” throughout their first summer at the house. The next improvements, which were both expensive and time consuming, all involved security. When Dan was visiting, he pointed out the fact that the existing doors on the house were both very well weathered, and although of solid core construction, not particularly stout. He suggested, “You should build doors that match the ballistic resistance of your house, otherwise they will turn out to be your proverbial weak link. The house itself will stop repeated hits from a .460 Weatherby, but your doors probably wouldn’t stop a .22 magnum. You should build some totally mondo doors. While you are at it, you should build shutters for your windows to match.”Although it turned out to be far more work and a lot more money than he had expected, Todd took Dan’s advice, and went ahead with the project the next summer.

First, they removed the old doors and doorframes. They replaced the original doorframes with metal frames. The frames were mounted using six-inch-long, half-inch diameter anchor bolts installed at eight-inch intervals into the surrounding brick. To do this, Todd had to rent a heavy-duty three-quarter-horsepower hammer action drill and buy special masonry bits. Even with the hammer action drill, the job took several hours. Next, Todd had a local cabinetmaker build him custom doors out of three-and-one-half-inch thick maple wood. The doors were hung on not three, but five extra-heavy hinges. Before he left, the cabinetmaker commented, “No one will ever kick these doors in.” Little did he know that the Grays weren’t even halfway done building their doors.

With prior coordination, Todd and Mary had the help of Dan Fong, the Nelsons, and the Laytons for the next phase of the project. As it turned out, they needed all of them to complete the job. They started by drilling a row of half-inch diameter holes around the perimeter of the doors. Next, with the oxyacetylene torch welding expertise of “The Fong Man,” they cut corresponding holes in the steel plates that he had special ordered from Haskins Steel Company in Spokane. At the same time, Dan cut holes for the positions of the doorknob lock set and the dead bolt lock set.

Originally, Dan had suggested either one-inch thick mild plate steel, or half-inch thick hardened steel to go over the windows and doors. That was before he realized how much they would weigh. When he got back to Chicago, he consulted one of his books of engineering tables and found the formula for figuring the weight of plate steel: Length (in inches) x width (inches) x thickness (inches) x .2560 = weight (pounds) To cover the larger of the two varieties of windows on the house, they would need plate steel measuring thirty inches by fifty inches. If they were to be made out of one-inch plate steel, these pieces would each weigh 384 pounds. Clearly, such plates could not be put in place with anything but a crew with a special hoist. To Todd, this was unacceptable, because he wanted to keep the “Harder Homes and Gardens” portion of his preparations very low profile. The last thing that he needed was to be labeled as the local paranoid survivalist.

The solution to the weight problem also came from Fong: stacking thinner steel plates to build up the same thickness. Hardened plate steel was both more expensive than mild steel and very hard to drill. It was also hard to find hardened steel in the dimensions required. So Todd opted for thicker mild steel.

Although four quarter-inch plates stacked together would not provide quite the same protection as a single homogeneous plate, it would still be a formidable barrier. To go a step better, Mary suggested that they mount five thicknesses of quarter-inch steel plates, rather than just four. This would provide a comparable or even slightly better level of ballistic protection than a one-inch homogeneous plate.

The stacks of five plates for each door were bolted together with half-inch diameter carriage bolts six inches long. To provide even greater security, the ends of the bolts were welded in place, so they could not be unbolted. Next, the outermost steel plates and the exposed edges and hardware were given two coats of Rust-Oleum paint. Finally, a quarter-inch veneer of walnut was glued over the top of the steel plating. This was stained and then received three coats of Varathane marine-grade varnish.

Todd had a difficult time finding a supplier for locksets and dead bolts that would fit doors this thick, but he finally found one in Seattle. They shipped the locks out via UPS “second day air” service. Inside, Dan Fong again put his welding rig to use, and fabricated four sets of massive bars—two for each of the doors. The brackets for these bars were made from three-inch wide, half-inch thick stock. The bars themselves were two-inch wide I beams. In a nifty arrangement again designed by Dan, the bars pivoted on a bolt at one end, and then could be locked in place with a three-eighths-inch bolt that slid through the bracket as a cross pin.

To the casual observer, the doors appeared to be typical residential doors, thanks to the wood veneer. Only when they were swung open did it become obvious how heavily they were constructed.

All of the house’s window openings got a similar treatment. First, each of the metal plates to be mounted was slotted in a cross pattern. The cross slots had openings two inches wide, and were eight inches high and ten inches wide. These slots would make it possible to aim and fire guns from behind the protection of the plating. While Dan was busy at work with his cutting torch, Mike Nelson approached him and asked if he had gotten the idea for the cross slots out of one of his collection of Kurt Saxon books. Dan turned off his torch with loud pop and pulled up his face mask. Sweat was rolling down his face.

He replied with a broad grin, “Oops! Oxy first. My bad. No, Mikey, the idea for the plates themselves came from Kurt Saxon’s The Survivor compendium, all right, but the cross slotting idea came from the Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales.” Nelson just shook his head and walked away.

Throughout the shutter-making process, Dan took the time to teach the others present the basics of cutting and welding. Ken Layton had used a torch many times before, but did pick up a few new tricks from Dan. To the others, it was a new experience. Lisa Nelson seemed to develop the knack of welding a smooth bead faster than any of the others, so along with Ken Layton, she became a “relief welder” to help out Dan. She was very proud of her newfound skill, and this became immediately apparent to Mike. “When we get home, I’m calling your office and telling them that you are quitting your job as an arteeest to become a precision welder.” She replied with a smile, “You’re just jealous, you dumb, uncoordinated flatfoot.”

The next phase of the job was even more time consuming than laying out and cutting the cross slots in the dozens of steel plates. They began by mounting extra heavy-duty hinges on anchor bolts installed in holes drilled in the brickwork at eight-inch intervals. Next, the first of five steel plates was welded directly onto the free hanging half of each hinge. Rather than cutting holes in each plate as they had for the carriage bolts for the doors, it was decided to simply weld each successive plate to the one beneath it.

The last of the gas in Dan’s cylinders was used up fabricating what would eventually be called “mini” shutters. These inner shutters consisted of three stacked quarter-inch plate thicknesses welded to a hinge. These covers were designed to cover the cross slots when they were not being used. As a finishing touch, standard sliding bolts were fitted to both the main shutters and the mini shutters, so that they could be locked in either the closed or open position. A similar shutter, minus cross slots, was built for the Grays’ new wood chute.

After three days of almost continuous cutting and welding, Dan Fong was dog-tired and blistered. When asked by Terry Layton what he thought of the end result of their labors, Dan replied in a drawl, “They’ll suffice. But I think that if I ever build a place of my own, I’ll make mine a bit more sturdy than these here lightweight jobs.” He was promptly greeted by a chorus of raspberries.

The “window treatment” was completed much like the doors, with a coat of Rust-Oleum, gluing on a wood veneer, and then stain and Varathane.

Covering up the cross slots took a little ingenuity. It was Mary that came up with the idea of making friction fit wooden inserts to go in each cross slot.

“They’ll just look like decorative trim,” Mary posited. When Mike Nelson stood behind one of the completed shutters with his HK for the first time to test them out, it worked beautifully. All that he had to do was open up the glass portion of the window, swing back the plate covering the cross slot, and pop out the wooden insert with the muzzle of his rifle. “Oh yeah!” he declared.

“Come and get it, you stinking looters. Today’s special is on hot lead!”

After Kevin bought his house in Idaho, he decided to do some upgrading, as well. Although his new house was wood heated and had double pane windows throughout, it did not have true “retreat potential” for any serious confrontation. There were several detractors. First, it was of wood frame construction, with decorative cedar siding, and a shake roof. A few Molotov cocktails, and it’d be history.

The house was served by a two-hundred-feet deep well, which produced twelve gallons per minute. He decided to upgrade the survival potential of the house by installing a Solarjack Type G pump to replace the existing submersible pump that ran off regular line current. In most scenarios, the power grid would be one of the first things to go. Outwardly, the pump looked like a miniature version of an oil field “cricket.” The Solarjack pump ran directly off of photovoltaic solar panels, with no batteries involved in the system at all.

When the sun shined, the ninety-volt D.C. motor ran the pump. When the sun stopped shining, the pump stopped pumping. Kevin bought the Solarjack pump from Sam Watson, the owner of Northern Solar Electric Systems near Sandpoint, Idaho.

On several successive weekends the Grays helped Kevin pour the pad for the pump, install the draw pipe, pump cylinder, and fiberglass “sucker rods,” the pump, and the pole for the solar panel tracker. Even more than the jack pump, the tracker assembly appealed to his engineer’s sense of a good design. The tracker, built by Zomeworks Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, used a metal frame charged with Freon to turn the panel rack to match the angle of the sun. It worked on the simple principle of heat expansion. Because two sides of the frame were mounted with aluminum sunshades, part of it would be exposed to the sun, while the rest was not. As one side of the frame heated up, the Freon expanded as sunlight heated it up. This changed the balance of the frame, and hence the tilt of the tracker, roughly matching the angle of the sun.

According to Watson, the tracker would provide a 25 percent increase in the output of his panels. Although he did not anticipate the need, Kevin went ahead and bought a tracker that could hold up to six solar panels, even though his system would only be using three Kyocera forty-eight-watt solar panel modules. The ability to increase his pumping capacity by simply strapping on more panels appealed to Kevin.

The installation of the solar powered pump also necessitated changing the house’s water storage system. As it was configured when he bought it, the house used a thirty-gallon pressure tank connected to the submersible pump. Kevin decided to go whole hog with the water storage side of the equation. He requested bids from several makers of cisterns in the area, as well as distributors of poly and fiberglass tanks. He soon selected Adam Holton of Lenore, Idaho, some fifty miles away, to build him a concrete storage cistern. Holton put in an incredibly low bid of “$2,050 complete” to build a thirty-five-hundred-gallon cistern. This was about one-half the cost of putting in a pair of fifteen-hundred-gallon fiberglass tanks. It would also last much, much longer.

The cistern was situated on a hillside, four-hundred-and-fifty linear feet and seventy vertical feet, above the house. This provided a large, stable water supply with gravity feed. Because the solar pump ran almost continuously during daylight hours, it would keep the cistern constantly full. Rather than install a float switch to turn off the pump when the cistern was full, Kevin decided to have a pond excavated at the base of the hill below the cistern. The overflow from the cistern ran down a pipe to keep the pond full. Even at peak usage when watering his garden and small orchard, the pond remained constantly full.

While he was installing the solar pump and cistern, Kevin decided to install first-class water lines as well. He contracted with Underwood Pump Supply of Lewiston to provide the pipe and to do the trenching. Because Bovill was at fairly high elevation, Kevin opted to have the water lines buried at a four-foot depth to rule out the risk of frozen pipes. Despite a couple of unexpected breakdowns of the “Ditch Witch” trenching machine that caused delays, Chuck Underwood did an admirable job of digging clean, deep, trenches. With the incredibly deep topsoil of the Palouse, they encountered only a few rocks.

Again with system longevity in mind, Kevin selected Schedule 40 PVC pipe to use throughout. He opted for two-inch pipe for the service line, and three-quarter-inch pipe for the overflow line. Underwood also sold Kevin a dozen Merrill frost-proof spigots. In all, Kevin had to buy over eight hundred feet of pipe and have over seven hundred feet of trenching done. This was because he wanted to position several spigots around the house, several at his garden site, and two at his orchard site. To install the spigots and glue together the pipe, Kevin did not need the assistance of a contractor. He did most of it himself, with a bit of assistance from Todd in the more difficult steep section of the system just below the cistern.

The other upgrade that Kevin made to his house the first summer he was there also involved water. He installed a row of sprinklers on the peak of his roof, as well as an array of sprinklers around the house. When turned on full blast, the ground sprinklers thoroughly soaked most of the walls of the house, while the roof sprinklers did a good job of soaking the cedar shakes. Although not fully proof against his envisioned bands of arson-prone looters, Kevin felt a little better about the fire safety of his house. “Besides,” he suggested, “if things get really bad, I can go down the road to stay at the home of the little piggy that built his house of brick.”

Todd and Mary were so impressed with Kevin’s water system that they upgraded their own water system along the same lines. First, they had Underwood dig up their existing water lines. Once they saw the pipe that came up, they were glad that they decided to go ahead with the job. The pipe appeared to be about the same vintage as the house. It was rusty, had several small leaks, and at half-inch diameter, it was woefully undersized. They replaced the pipe with two-inch diameter Schedule 40 PVC. At the same time, they extended their water lines to accommodate a larger garden and their plans for a bigger orchard. Again following Kevin’s lead, they also replaced all of the old water spigots with Merrill “frost frees.”

Because Todd and Mary’s system was served by a spring, rather than a well, there was no need to install a fancy solar pump. Mary was particularly impressed with the photovoltaic array, however, and convinced Todd to take the plunge and install a photovoltaic twelve-volt DC power system for the retreat house.

With the help of Sam Watson, the Grays installed an eight-panel Zomeworks tracker, and a full complement of Kyocera forty-eight-watt panels. The tracker was mounted eight feet away from the south side of the house, between two sets of windows. Because of the tremendous line loss of DC power, on the advice of Watson, the Grays decided to wire only the living room with twelve-volt DC. This circuit charged a bank of nickel cadmium batteries, which Todd installed in the bottom of an old armoire. The batteries in turn powered the Grays’ numerous twelve-volt DC radios and gadgets, as well as an inverter. The inverter built by Xantrex of Arlington,Washington, converted twelve volts DC to hundred and seventeen volts AC. Because it used a modern sine wave inversion design, the Xantrex was very efficient.

Later, Todd added a Winco twelve-volt wind generator to the system. Mary saw it advertised in the for-sale ads in the Idahonian, a Moscow newspaper. Including the fifteen-foot tower, the used five-hundred-watt generator cost only two hundred and fifty dollars. It even came with two extra sets of bearings and brushes for the generator.

Because the retreat was not in a particularly good location for wind exposure, the fifteen-foot tower was insufficient. Rather than buy a larger steel tower, the expense of which would have dwarfed the cost of buying the wind generator, Todd decided to build his own tower.

After studying several options for building their own guy-wired tower out of steel, it was Kevin who came up with the idea of building a wooden tower.

He said, “What you can do is build a three-legged wooden pole tower, and put a platform on top of it. Then, you can just bolt your fifteen-foot tower on top.”

As it turned out, it was a good, inexpensive, albeit time-consuming idea. Again through the newspaper, Mary found a source for used telephone poles. They bought three forty-footers. They cost a total of forty dollars, delivered. They used Todd’s McCullough Pro-Mac 610 chain saw to cut the poles off to equal lengths. It took some sweat and ingenuity, but Todd and Kevin were able to dig the holes for the posts, and raise them using a “gin pole” arrangement. Next, using a set of tree climbing spikes, Todd climbed the poles and built a platform out of two-by-tens. With foresight, they had already drilled holes through the poles for the bolts to attach the cross-members. All of the lumber for the platform was raised using a pulley arrangement.

After the wooden tower was in place, it took even more sweat and ingenuity to disassemble, raise, and reassemble the fifteen-foot “stub” tower for the Wincharger. Next, even more precariously, came the generator and, finally, its propeller. Even though Todd used heavy number-six cable to run the power from the generator to the twelve-volt system junction box, there was still considerable line loss in the fifty-seven feet of cable.

In retrospect, Todd was disappointed by the contribution of the Wincharger to the system. Even with a twenty-five-m.p.h. wind, the generator did not put out as much current as the eight PV panels on a sunny day. At least Todd had the satisfaction of knowing that in the winter, when their PV panels were putting out their least amount of power, the Wincharger would be cranking away, however inefficiently. Later, Todd admitted that the Wincharger was not worth the investment in dollars, time, and sweat that went into its installation. It was, however, as Todd put it, “good practical experience, and a chance to apply some brain power to something other than crunching numbers.”

The next upgrade for the retreat was the construction of “spider holes” for ambush positions by the side of the county road. There were a total of seven one-man foxholes, dug at roughly twelve-foot intervals. Todd then lined the foxholes with pressure treated plywood. To provide drainage, Todd dug the holes an extra fifteen inches deep and laid down a base of gravel beneath the floorboards. A dozen half-inch diameter holes were drilled in each set of floorboards.

Gray also took the time to dig a pair of “grenade sumps” for each spider hole. This design trick, which was taught to the group by Jeff Trasel, consisted of an eight-inch diameter hole, four feet long dug downward at a forty-five-degree angle, starting at each of the two front corners of each spider hole. As Jeff explained, the idea behind the sumps was that if anyone were to toss a grenade into a spider hole, whoever was occupying it could kick it into either of the sumps where it would explode harmlessly. This, of course, assumed that they could get the grenade into the sump before it exploded. Although it was considered a last ditch defense against grenades, it was better than nothing.

Todd and Mary found some interesting ways to camouflage the lids to the spider holes. Most were covered by old pieces of scrap plywood or odd-shaped pieces of corrugated sheet metal roofing material. One used a Volkswagen car door. The one that Todd was particularly proud of used an abandoned refrigerator laying on its back for a door. Because the sides of the refrigerator were above ground level, Todd reinforced them from inside with six sheet thicknesses of the quarter-inch plate steel left over from the door and window shutter project.

As the spider holes were positioned at twelve-foot intervals, Todd thought that their positioning might attract suspicion, so he scattered additional pieces of junk around the area. When completed, the set of spider holes was undetectable. It just made the area between their fence line and the county road resemble a junk pile.

The last major physical security upgrade for the retreat was a chain-link fence around the house. Its gate got one of the last of the set of keyed-alike locks. As it turned out, the lowest price available on chain-link fences came from Sears. When the installation crew inquired why they wanted the fence, Mary just pointed to Shona and answered, “I don’t want our Ridgeback wandering off and getting shot by some farmer. I hear that it happens quite a bit around here.”

The fence was to serve two purposes. First, it would slow down anyone trying to gain entrance to the house. Second, it would pre-detonate the warheads of rocket propelled grenades (RPGs). Todd didn’t mention this second aspect to Mary. The thought of anyone using a LAW rocket or a Soviet RPG against their house seemed far-fetched. He didn’t want Mary laughing at him. She had already told him that she thought that the spider holes were “a bit much.”

Late in the summer Todd set about getting his supply of wood ready for winter. Although he didn’t have to, he decided to split all five cords of wood before stacking it. “We won’t have to stack it twice this way,” he declared. Todd had never split large quantities of wood before, so he ended up regretting the fact that he had committed himself to splitting the wood all at once. As it turned out, it took him two weeks to do the job, because he also had six hours of accounting work to do every day.

As his experience at wood splitting grew, Todd became a better judge of where to strike with the splitting maul, and with the larger rounds of wood, where to place his wedges. Consequently, Todd got quite a bit faster at the job.

Mary, who was doing all the stacking while Todd did the splitting, noticed the quickening of his pace. She complained, “Slow down, Arnie, I’m starting to have trouble keeping up with you.”

“Who’s Arnie?” Todd asked.

“You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I figured with all those bulging muscles that you’ve been building, you’ll look like Arnie in no time at all.”

Todd grinned and joked in his best pseudo-German, “Yah, das ist true, mein Leibchurn. I vill be zee Arrnee of your treams.”

After a long pause and a shared smile, Mary wiped her brow, and said, “I’ve got to take a break and get some water. I’ll finish up stacking the rest of this wood later in the afternoon when it starts to cool off.” She then turned and walked back to the house, her hips swinging enough to make Todd whistle.

Todd was seldom so intensely happy. Married life suited him well.