Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 11 Dawn

Once the cold weather began to set in, during the first fall after the Crunch, the members of the group at the retreat settled into a routine. The main activity was standing picket and C.Q. shifts. As the weather began to get wetter and colder, the members began to dread LP/OP duty. In contrast, C.Q. duty was referred to as “soft duty.” When not standing guard shifts, the other members worked on projects around the house, did laundry by hand in a large tub, and helped with the cooking. With few gardening tasks, there was even some spare time to read, talk, or play board games. Formal meetings were held only as circumstances made them necessary.

With Lon’s permission, Doug and Della were married on the first of November. It was a ceremony much like the one that had been held for Jeff and Rose. The only difference was that there was more warning, so everyone took the time to dress better. All of the men wore ties from Todd’s closet. Margie made a wedding cake. She was adept at getting the temperature of the woodstove oven just right.

The most popular games at the retreat were chess, Risk, and the card game Hearts. The radios yielded little more than static. On most evenings they would listen to the news on Swiss Radio International at 9.910 megahertz, the only commercial shortwave station on the air. It was all bad news.

Bible study and prayer meetings were held each evening after dinner. Either Lon, who was an agnostic, or Kevin, who was Jewish, took a short stint of LP/OP duty during these meetings. Kevin attended only the Bible studies when they were on Old Testament scriptures. Almost every evening, Todd, who had a melodic speaking voice, would read aloud for half an hour in the living room. Everyone would sit and watch the fire and listen to Todd read out loud. He started out reading short stories like Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” and Carl Stephenson’s “Leinengen Versus the Ants.” Later, he began reading novels, a few chapters at a time. These included The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Todd skipped over the lewd passages from the latter, which he thought detracted from an otherwise top-notch novel. Todd often wore his TRC-500 headset during the readings so that whoever was standing LP/OP duty could listen in. For a generation reared on television, Todd was the next best thing.

Each Thursday was movie night. Using Kevin’s wide-screen Mac laptop, they clustered chairs in the living room and watched one of the eighty-three DVDs in the combined collection at the retreat—most of them came from the Grays or Kevin Lendel. Saturday night was “movie rerun night,” for the benefit of those who missed the Thursday movie because of LP/OP or C.Q. duty. The Saturday nights were nearly as well attended as the Thursday first showings.

One of the regular chores at the retreat was grinding wheat and corn, roughly every other day. For this, the group members took turns using Mary’s Country Living grain mill. It was a well-made and reliable unit that verged on being overengineered. The mill’s body was die-cast. Mary said that she would have preferred a cast iron body, “But of course it would weigh as much as an anvil,” she said with a laugh. The mill was adjustable from very coarse (for simply cracking grain), to very fine, for making bread flour. The internal parts could be removed for service or repair. It had ball bearings on the shaft, which was a nice feature that most other small mills didn’t have. In addition to the hand crank, the unit had a steel v-belt pulley wheel. Soon after they arrived, Lon fabricated a mount for the mill on the bicycle/generator with an adjustable travel to provide proper belt tension. Pedaling was far easier than turning the crank by hand. Mary bought the mill in 2002. It cost three hundred and forty dollars, and Mary soon spent an extra seventy dollars on spare parts, “just in case.”

Once every two weeks, Mike had each member take turns at leading a practice patrol or ambush. Their performance was critiqued after each training session. Within a few weeks, the group’s patrols took on a heretofore unknown level of precision. Noise was minimal or nonexistent, hand and arm signals were relayed expertly, and operations orders were given professionally, using the Army’s standard five paragraph “op order” format.

The only problem that arose in the weeks after the new members were added to the group came when the septic tank backed up. From the day that the Nelsons arrived, Mary had insisted that everyone collect their used toilet paper in paper bags rather than flushing it. The contents of these bags were burned daily. The bags were euphemistically called “clothespin bags,” in reference to the clothespins that were used to keep them shut to control odors.

Even though there was no toilet paper going through the septic system, Margie surmised that the large number of people at the Grays’ house was over-taxing it. The first sign of this problem came when the kitchen sink drain started gurgling ominously. Margie recognized this symptom and alerted Todd.

Resolving the problem took several days. First, the lid to the septic tank had to be found. This involved nearly a full day of probing with a pointed steel rod to determine where the outer edges of the concrete septic tank were located, and then digging down to the pumping cover.

A quick inspection showed that the tank’s sanitary tee was clogged, and there was a fairly heavy layer of “cake” or “scum” in the upper potion of the center section of the three-section tank. The color of the liquid in the tank was almost black, which Margie said was a good sign that the friendly bacteria were doing their job. The blockage was soon cleared with a length of one-inch galvanized pipe. So that not as much digging would be required the next time the septic tank had to be inspected or worked on, Todd and Lon cut a fifty-five-gallon drum to the proper length to use as an inspection hatch. A piece of quarter-inch plate steel was laid on top, with the realization that the thin sheet metal drum would eventually rust out. With the new hatch in place, only a six-inch layer of soil had to be removed rather than twenty-five inches.

The inspection of the septic tank confirmed Margie’s suspicion that the increased number of people living at the house had exceeded its carrying capacity. Todd consulted with the rest of the group members about their options. Two suggestions were made: frequently pumping the tank or constructing an outhouse to supplement the septic tank system. The first option was out of the question because they did not have the pumping apparatus available to empty the tank. So they built an outhouse.

The outhouse was constructed a hundred feet from the house, far downhill from the spring, and away from the natural course of rainwater runoff. Mike mentioned that he had once seen an easy way to build a privy, at a hunting camp. His design suggestion was the one that was eventually used. All that had to be done was to bury two-thirds of the length of a fifty-five-gallon drum into the ground. An oval-shape hole was then cut in its top with a cutting torch. Then the entire bottom of the barrel was also cut out. After the jagged edges were filed off, a used toilet seat was mounted with its bolts through the top of the drum. To make it a private privy, a movable wooden shed was built over the top of it.

The new outhouse had several advantages. First, it took the burden off of the house’s flush toilet septic system. Second, it would provide a valuable source of fertilizer for the flower garden that had previously been wasted. Todd soon instituted a rule that the group members would use the outhouse exclusively—except in cases of illness or when there was a certifiable blizzard blowing. This was not a popular rule, but it was heeded.

With the exception of Rose, all the group members maintained good health during the first winter at the retreat. A few of the members caught colds in the first weeks, but there were no cases of the flu or other illnesses that winter. Mary surmised that their isolation from other people was keeping them away from the infectious diseases transmitted by personal contact. All the original group members had received pneumonia vaccinations, in anticipation of eventually having a large group living in cramped quarters.

The group kept busy, even in the winter months. Since the house had an electric hot water heater—now defunct—they heated water on the woodstoves for washing dishes, laundering clothes, or bathing as a daily chore. Water for baths was hauled in kettles from the kitchen to the bathroom. Luckily, it was only a few steps away. Laundry was done twice a week in a James hand washer and wrung with a hand wringer. Mary had had the foresight to order the James washer from the Lehman’s Amish mail-order catalog. Kevin Lendel picked up the wringer at a farm auction in Clarkia, the summer before the Crunch. On the “non-laundry days,” it was a couple’s turn to have bathwater.

Saturdays were bath days for the bachelors. All of this water heating and hauling made Todd wish that he had installed hot water coils in the heating stove.

Most of the group members kept in good spirits as the winter set in. Unlike millions of their fellow Americans, they weren’t wet, cold, or hungry. Each evening before dinner, group members took turns saying a blessing. For anyone who was forgetful, it was there that they enumerated their many blessings. Only two members had any significant difficulties adjusting. One was Rose, who frequently got depressed worrying about her family, or thinking about the situation in general.

The other was Lisa, who roughly once a month would get into a verbal fight with someone or throw a temper tantrum over something that annoyed her. In most cases, she stormed off to her room and pouted. The next morning she would emerge, make her apologies, and then act as if nothing had happened.

T.K. counseled anyone who was showing signs of irritability or depression.

Both most commonly occurred during the winter months, when everyone was by necessity living in close quarters. His counseling sessions usually consisted of a half an hour of prayer, questions and answers, some advice, and occasionally a good cry. T.K.’s never-flagging positive attitude and sense of humor did a lot to keep everyone else in good spirits. It was infectious.

One evening, when everyone around the dinner table was quiet and glum, absorbed in their own thoughts, T.K. yelled “Food fight!” He started throwing dehydrated peas at anyone and everyone. It turned into a major conflagration, with peas and instant mashed potatoes flung with abandon for at least a full minute. When the combat and the laughter died down, T.K. did most of the cleaning up of the food and putting it in Shona’s scrap bowl. The clean up job took nearly half an hour. As he later explained to Todd, it was worth it just to hear everyone laughing.

LP/OP duty was a tremendously boring experience. Aside from being able to watch the sun rise and set, and refamiliarizing themselves with the constella-tions, there was not a lot to do. Reading while on guard duty was forbidden, lest a picket lose track of time and let an intruder slip in. There were a few false alarms at first, mostly caused by visiting deer, porcupines, and bears. Eventually, though, everyone became familiar with the normal activity patterns, sights, and sounds of the game.

At night, guards listened for sounds of movement or vehicle engines. They also watched for any of the twenty trip flares that were set up around the perimeter. These military surplus M49A1 trip flares were strapped to the sides of trees and poles. They were mechanically activated when anyone stumbled into their trip wires. At first, a few were inadvertently set off by group members forgetting where they were located. A few more were tripped by deer or by Shona. This latter phenomenon ended when all of the trip flares were repositioned to a greater height. During daylight and twilight hours, pickets glassed the hillsides and the county road in both directions with binoculars. For countless days, nothing happened. No one was seen on the county road. Kevin Lendel aptly described LP/OP duty as “tedium ad nauseam.”

It was Lisa’s turn at picket duty when something finally interrupted the monotony. She stood in the LP/OP, snuggled in a surplus N-3B Extreme Cold Weather parka, occasionally stamping her feet, watching the gathering gray gloom of dawn. As she was looking at the tree line at the back of the property, Lisa heard Shona barking. She turned to see four pickup trucks in a tight column, coming down the gravel county road, running with only parking lights on.

As soon as she saw the trucks, Lisa picked up the TA-1 field telephone and pulsed the clacker on its side. Mary, who was on C.Q. duty, answered. “There are four rigs in a row coming in from the west. Just a minute… They are slowing down. They are stopping at the front gate. Get everybody up, now. Now, now, now!” Mary hit the panic switch. Mallory Sonalerts throughout the house began emitting a piercing, high-pitched tone.

Everything started happening very quickly when a man carrying a pair of thirty-six-inch bolt cutters hopped out the passenger side of the lead truck and ran up to the gate. Lisa rotated the selector switch on her CAR-15 and popped open the carbine’s scope covers. “Crud! Hardly enough light,” she cursed to herself. At about the same time, the gate swung open and the lead pickup gunned its engine. The truck didn’t stop to pick up the man at the gate, who had dropped prone and out of sight in the high grass and teasels.

Lisa sighted on the passenger side window of the second pickup, which was slowing down to negotiate the turn a hundred yards down the hill from her foxhole. She fired two rounds, and missed, her shots passing well over the cab of the pickup. The words “Slow down, Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, and Squeeeeze, or you won’t hit anything” echoed in her mind. With her next two shots, the passenger window of the third pickup crumpled satisfactorily. By now the first of the trucks was less than seventy-five yards from the house. Lisa continued to fire, much more rapidly, primarily at the backs of the pickups.

Inside the house, it was pandemonium. “From the front, four trucks!” Mary yelled.

Todd was the first in the house to start shooting, his HK91 bucking steadily against his shoulder. Just as most of the others got to their prearranged positions behind the slotted steel plates over the windows, three of the four trucks disappeared from view, wheeling quickly behind the barn. The fourth sped on, heading for the chain-link fence that surrounded the house.

No driver was visible behind the truck’s smashed windshield as it hit the fence. The fence gave way with seeming effortlessness. The pickup then skidded sideways and nearly rolled over as it came to a stop only twenty-five feet from the house. A crescendo of fire that sounded more like tearing canvas than individual shots peppered the side of the truck. Its driver and anyone who might have been lying in the truck’s bed were undoubtedly well ventilated.

Thirty seconds later, the firing stopped. Not out of self control, but rather because every one of the guns on the south side of the house were empty. All except Todd’s. After firing most of a twenty-round magazine, he replaced it with his one and only thirty-round magazine, scanning for targets. “Reload, and fire only at definite targets!” Todd shouted. He then heard the clatter of numerous rifles being reloaded.

“What on Earth’s happening up there?” asked Della from the back bedroom.

“Shut up and watch your sector of fire!” Todd shouted in reply.

A man briefly emerged from around the corner of the barn and fired three rounds from a SKS carbine at the house. All three rounds bounced harmlessly off the steel plates covering the windows. His shots were returned by several volleys from the house, which sent the man scurrying back behind the cover of the barn. The man popped the SKS around the corner and emptied it blindly.

Only two rounds hit the house. Another volley of return fire from the house shredded the corner of the metal barn.

Todd quietly asked himself, “Now what?” He could not see any movement behind the barn, far off to his right. All that he could do was wait.

The only one with a view of the attackers, and a partial view at that, was Lisa, one-hundred-and-fifty yards away at the LP/OP. She could see two of them, both armed with riot shotguns, and the back end of one of the pickups.

Fighting to control her breathing, she said quietly to herself, “Now let’s do this right.” She reached down into her ALICE pack and pulled out the bipod for her CAR-15. She clamped on the bipod and tried to center the four-power scope’s crosshairs on one of the attackers. This took some time because she was shooting downhill and the bipod’s legs were the wrong length. Only after she had shifted her position so that she rested on her knees on the chair was she able to acquire her target.

She fired twice, hitting the first man cleanly between the shoulder blades on the first shot. She couldn’t be sure about the second shot. Lisa quickly changed her point of aim to the second man, who at that time was dropping to the ground to take cover. She felt no recoil and heard nothing when she pulled the trigger. At first Lisa thought that her CAR-15 had jammed, but soon realized that its bolt carrier was locked to the rear—the magazine was empty.

Disgusted with herself, she dropped to the bottom of her hole and swapped the magazine for one of the stack of loaded thirty-round magazines from the .50 caliber ammo can dug into the side of the foxhole that served as a shelf.

“How could I have fired thirty rounds that fast?” she asked herself out loud.

When she popped up to try again, the other man was gone. Although he was not moving, she fired three more times at the now motionless man she had shot in the back, just to be sure. She then flattened both of the truck’s back tires, put a dozen rounds into the pickup’s camper shell, and used up the rest of the magazine puncturing the truck’s gas tank. Lisa again slithered down to the bottom of the foxhole, wondering what to do next. The answer came when she saw a Dymo label on the bottom of one of the magazines, as she reached up to the shelf to again reload her weapon. The label read, “Tracer.”

Hearing a steady popping from up the ridge, Mary stated, “Sounds like Lisa has them in sight from the LP/OP.” There was a long pause, then another two shots followed immediately by a loud explosion. A ball of fire welled up from behind the barn. To Mary, it looked like a miniature version of her imaginings of a nuclear ground burst.

It was relatively quiet for the next two minutes. No shots were fired, and the defenders sat anxiously at their positions, waiting for targets to present themselves. All that they could see were clouds of black smoke rising behind the barn. Then, as quickly as they came, the two remaining trucks roared out from behind the far side of the barn and back down the road to the gate. Todd, Mary, Dan, and Rose, all positioned at the front of the house, had the opportunity to fire several dozen rounds at the retreating pickups. They were disappointed to score only a few hits.

Lisa, still firing the magazine loaded with all tracers, got a few more hits as the two trucks sped away. To her surprise, the man who had used the bolt cutters, and who was now carrying only an automatic pistol, ran after the trucks waving his arms. Lisa took a steady aim with the bipod resting on the edge of the foxhole. It was eerie, almost seeming like slow motion, watching the red glow of the tracer arc out the two hundred and fifty yards to hit the man in the small of his back. He fell to the ground and began writhing violently. Lisa fired twice more. From the traces, she could see that both shots hit their mark. The man stopped moving.

Mike ordered everyone to reload their weapons and sit tight. A call to Lisa up at the LP/OP confirmed that she was all right. Mike asked, “Did you reload?”

She replied tersely, “Roger that.”

Next, Mike asked her if she saw any movement or anything unusual behind the barn. She replied, “No, just the pickup truck that they left behind. The tires are still burning like crazy.” Dan asked Mike, “Can I go out and check out the two trucks?”

Mike answered firmly, “No way! They could have left wounded or a ‘stay-behind’ out there. If there are any wounded, let’s give them time to hemorrhage. We’ve got allllll day.”

It was almost an hour later that Mike dispatched a squad to clear the area. By then the pickup truck at the corner of the barn had stopped burning. The squad moved in rushes as two separate fire teams, with one supporting the other on each bound. They didn’t find anyone living. In addition to the dead man down at the county road, they found one dead man in the truck that had crashed through the fence, and two bodies on the ground behind the barn.

The two men’s weapons were missing. There was also a body burned beyond recognition in the back of the pickup that Lisa had set on fire.

When they examined the pickup nearest the house, they found that the driver was very, very dead. He had been hit by at least ten bullets. In the cab of the pickup, they found a Smith and Wesson Model 66 .357 magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel. Luckily, it had not been hit in the fusillade, and it was still serviceable. In the glove compartment of the pickup, they found a variety of road maps. These were later closely examined because they bore a variety of marking and marginal notations.

In the bed of the pickup they found four empty five-gallon plastic hydraulic fluid containers, which had apparently been used to carry gasoline. All four containers had been punctured by bullets, but had been empty at the time they were hit. They also found a sleeping bag, several cans of beer (some punctured by bullets), a spare tire, three pornographic magazines, and half a case of canned tuna.

Not much was recognizable, and even less was usable, in the burned truck. It had mainly carried food, much of it in cans. The only salvageable item that was found was an eighteen-inch pipe wrench. Down at the county road, they found the abandoned pair of bolt cutters. Twenty yards down the road, next to the body of the man Lisa had shot in the back, they found a badly pitted Ruger P-85 nine-millimeter pistol. In the man’s pants pockets, they found a Case pocketknife, a set of lock picks in a leather case, and two loaded magazines for the pistol. On his belt, there was a crude handmade leather holster for the Ruger.

In case the group of looters turned out to be the vengeful type, Mike ordered that a second LP/OP be set up and manned continuously for the next twenty days. This put an extra burden on the group, but both he and Todd thought it prudent. The second LP/OP was set up on a low hill near the west property line. Because it was temporary, it was not dug in. It consisted of a diamond-shaped camouflage net supported in the center to a height of eighteen inches. This gave the observer just enough room to lie down comfortably. A length of WD-1 was run from the new LP/OP to the house. A TA-1 was set up at the LP/OP, and a second TA-1 was added to the C.Q.’s desk.

After setting up the new LP/OP, Todd called for another group meeting. There, he asked everyone to reorganize their backpacks as “bug out kits” to use in case the retreat was completely overrun. For this purpose, most of the group members’ packs carried a selection of contents similar to Doug Carlton’s pack when he first arrived at the retreat. At the same meeting the group discussed various options for additional security enhancements.

All of the usable items salvaged from the looters were locked up by Todd in the same locker that held the items seized from the pair of cannibal looters the previous year. The two wrecked pickups presented a problem. Neither of them could be easily towed because their tires no longer had integrity. Rather than fabricate a towing dolly, spare wheels from the group’s vehicles were temporarily mounted on the two trucks until they could be towed away. After they were towed to the grove of trees behind Kevin Lendel’s house, the trucks were put up on blocks so that the borrowed wheels could be taken back off.

Fixing the chain-link fence took four people an entire day. First, the sections of the fence that were damaged were cut away from the rest of the fence. Next, two fence poles were straightened, and another replaced entirely, with scrap pipe. Then, using two cable-ratchet hoist “come-alongs,” the mangled section of fence was straightened out. The bumper of the shot-up pickup and the bumper of Todd’s Power Wagon provided the anchoring points for the process.

Finally, this section of fence was put back into place and lashed back into the mesh, using three strands of baling wire that was twisted together to provide the necessary strength. The finished job was far from aesthetically pleasing, but it was functional. Jeff Trasel declared the repair, “Crude, but effective.”

Mike Nelson also replaced the cut lock at the gate on the county road with the last of Todd’s spare Master locks. Soon after, with two other Group members posted as security, Lon welded a special sleeve to the galvanized steel gatepost. It was made from a three-inch diameter pipe for the lock to fit into, so that it would be immune from attack by bolt cutters. The chain itself was a special rubber-coated type, normally used to secure motorcycles, which Todd had bought before the Crunch. It was guaranteed as virtually “un-cuttable” by its manufacturer. After they had done all this, Mike went to talk with Todd.

“Do you suppose that they’ll come back?” Mike asked.

“I really can’t say, Mike. If they do though, it won’t be nearly as easy to stop them. They’ll either try for a stealth blitz or come back with something so well-armored that they can just bull right in here with our bullets bouncing off of them.”

“There’s only one way we could stop something like that, and that’s some dynamite.”

“Well, Mikey, why don’t you put your thinking cap on and develop a plan to use some of your goodies in the basement.”

The next day, Nelson began the construction of his first fougasse, a sort of homemade cannon. He used some six-inch diameter pipe he found in the scrap heap behind the garage. All the material had been left behind by the farm’s former owners. It was heavy-gauge pipe. It looked like the same variety that he had seen used for water well casings. With Lon’s help, Dan cut off a six-foot length of pipe. Then, using some of the scrap left over from the window-plating project, they welded a one-half-inch thick cap on one end of the pipe.

With the help of several “stray bodies,” Mike moved the pipe down the hill to the front gate. Just inside the front gate there was a gently sloping grass-covered mound of earth six feet high and about fifteen feet in diameter. It sat about ten feet back from the road. It appeared to be soil left behind many years ago when a bulldozer was used to first cut the grade for the road up to the house. Using a pick and two shovels, Mike and his assistants cut away a strip of sod, and then dug a seven-foot-long trench across the top of the mound. They made the trench just wide enough to accept the six-inch pipe. Next, the pipe was laid down in the trench, with the open end facing the road. Mike ensured that the pipe pointed slightly downhill.

The next stage of the fougasse construction was the dangerous part. Mike went down to the basement and dug out the oldest of his three cases of Dupont 75 percent dynamite sticks. He found the dynamite to be in excellent condition. Mike pulled nine sticks of dynamite out of the case, and after thoroughly examining each of them, laid them in a cardboard box that was half filled with Styrofoam pellets. He handed this box to Rose, who with very wide eyes—it was her first time handling explosives—slowly and carefully carried them down to the front gate. “Get out of the way, I’m a suicide jockey!” she shouted, as she walked up the stairs from the basement.

Todd, who was standing at the top of the stairs, gave a hearty laugh. He quipped, “You can relax, Rose. There aren’t any blasting caps in those sticks.” From the other end of the basement, Mike gingerly opened his box of blasting caps.

He had a total of eighty-five caps. Fifty were of the electric variety. The rest were fuse type caps. As he examined them, he said to himself, “My little babies!

How are you today?” He selected two of his Ensign-Bickford electric caps for the fougasse. Holding the caps by their wires at arm’s length, Mike carefully walked up the stairs, out the front door, and down the hill to the gate. He then gently set the caps down, well away from the box containing the dynamite.

Mike went back up the hill to gather the materials he would need to finish the job. He collected ten pounds of scrap metal—mainly bent nails, rusty hardware, and the like; two pounds of broken glass; half a paper shopping bag of old rags; a reel of WD-1 commo wire; a pair of wire strippers; a roll of black electrical tape; a caulking gun loaded with a tube of clear silicone sealant; a box of plastic trash bags; a long push-broom handle; and a large plastic coffee can lid.

When he got back to the base of the hill, Mike began preparing his charge. First, he bundled the sticks of dynamite together with the electrical tape. He formed a circular bundle just over five inches in diameter. Next, he whittled a point on a wooden stick and used it to poke holes into the ends of two of the sticks of dynamite. Rose asked, “Why go to all the trouble of whittling a stick? You could use a screwdriver or a penknife.”

Mike replied, “I always try to avoid using metal. That rules out the risk of a spark of static electricity.” Rose frowned, and then nodded in agreement.

Next, with his hands trembling slightly, Mike inserted one blasting cap into each of the holes he had made. The caps were then securely fastened with several wraps of the black tape. He explained, “The second cap is just for redundancy. This could be buried for a long time before we ever have to touch it off.”

By now everyone except Rose and Doug were already back up the hill, hoping that they didn’t hear a big bang. They stayed to watch and get further instruction on the fine art of blasting from Mike.

Mike next cut off a fifteen-foot-length of commo wire, and stripped the ends of the pair of wires. In a few minutes, he deftly spliced the two sets of wire from the blasting caps to the commo wire, and covered the splices with electrical tape. He explained, “Again, I used two caps for extra insurance, just in case one is bad. It doesn’t happen very often, but for an application like this, it would be more than just embarrassing if it didn’t go off.” He then ran several loops of the commo wire around the bundle of dynamite and secured the loops with electrical tape. “This is so if there is any tension on the wire, it won’t pull the caps apart or out of position,” Mike explained. Next, he wrapped two thicknesses of plastic from one of the trash bags around the bundle, and sealed it with tape.

Then, with his breath held, but trying to appear calm, Nelson slid the bundle of dynamite down the metal tube of the fougasse. Once it was at the end of his arm’s reach, he completed pushing the bundle to the back-plate using the broomstick handle. “As you can see, I just left the commo wire dangling out the front of the pipe. I’ll deal with it later.”

Next, Mike began stuffing the rags down the pipe.

“What are those for?” Rose asked.

Still looking down at his work, Mike replied, “They act just like the wad in a shotgun shell.”

After he had lightly tamped in the rags with the broomstick, Nelson began tossing the rusty scrap metal and broken glass into the mouth of the pipe.

These, too, he tamped with the broomstick. An odd look came across Mike’s face, and he let out a chuckle. Turning to face Rose and Doug, he pressed the ends of his eyebrows upward with his fingertips. He quoted, “If propelled with sufficient force, they would make formidable projectiles.”

Doug began laughing uproariously. Rose didn’t get the joke.

Doug said, “What’s the matter, Rose, didn’t you ever watch Star Trek? Remember the episode where Captain Kirk has to duel with the captain of the Gorn spaceship, the giant lizard man?”

“Oh yeah, now I remember,” Rose said with a smile. “Is that where you got the idea for building this ‘foo-gas?’”

Mike shook his head. “No, the basic concept is the same, but the design for this is straight out of one of my Army Engineer field manuals. This sucker isn’t portable, like Captain Kirk’s. However, it’s also about ten thousand times safer to use.”

Mike was nearly finished with the job. Using his pocketknife, he poked a hole near the edge of the plastic coffee can lid. He then threaded the ends of the length of WD-1 through the hole. Mike then slid the lid down the wires until it fit over the end of the six-inch pipe. “An almost perfect fit,” he declared. Next a bead of silicone caulking was run around the lip of the pipe, and another dab was squirted through the hole through which the commo wire passed. He then shoved the lid onto the pipe. “Doug, can you hold this in place while I secure it with some tape?” Mike asked.

Carlton stepped forward with a loud, “Yes, Sir!”

After a few wraps of tape were in place over the lid, Mike placed two thicknesses of the plastic trash bag over the cap. Then, it too was secured with several wraps of tape. Brushing his hands together, Mike offered, “Okay, that oughta keep it watertight.”

During the next half hour, Mike, Doug, and Rose back-filled the trench and relaid the sod over the top of it. Less than an inch of sod covered the muzzle of the fougasse. Unless someone knew what to look for, the existence of the fougasse was not detectable.

Later that afternoon, with the aid of several more shovels and shovelers, a shallow trench was dug from the fougasse up to the house. After another splice was made and wrapped with electrical tape, the WD-1 was reeled out in the trench. At the house, the WD-1 was fed into the house via an air vent in the brickwork. The far end of the commo wire was positioned at a front window with a good view of the gate. The ends of the two-conductor wire were then connected to a Claymore mine firing device, commonly called a “clacker.”

The clacker belonged to Dan Fong. It had been given to him several years before by a coworker at his cannery who was an Iraq War veteran. After testing the circuit with a volt/ohm meter, the clacker, with its heavy wire “safety bale” in place, was then put in a cigar box that was marked with a hand-painted red warning sign. It read, “Hands Off. This means you. By order of the Tac. Coord.”

Todd liked the fougasse so much that he had Mike and his understudies build five more over the next seven days. This used up most of the rest of the scrap six-inch pipe. The second fougasse was lined up with a large downed tree some fifty yards away from the house. Todd picked this spot because the tree would be a tempting piece of cover for anyone attacking the house. Todd said, “If we spot anyone laying behind the log and shooting at us, Ka-Boooom! End of story.”

The third fougasse protected a blind spot beneath the LP/OP. The fourth was aimed at a trail junction at the edge of the wood lot. As a cue to trigger this fougasse during hours of darkness, a trip flare was strung at chest height. The fifth was aimed at the area behind the barn—the blind spot that the last group of looters had used to their advantage. The sixth and last fougasse was planted in a hole in the middle of the county road, in the center of the ambush zone covered by the spider holes. This fougasse, designed to fire vertically, was specially designed to defeat vehicles. It was loaded with a single pointed three-inch diameter hardened steel penetrator backed with a small coffee can filled with two pounds of scrap metal shrapnel and all the powder from a thirty-minute road flare. This coffee can had slits running its full length, cut at one-inch intervals. This was designed to delay the spread of the shrapnel until it entered a vehicle.

The clacker in the cigar box was soon replaced by a control panel, built by Kevin. It had enough indicator lights and switches to control up to ten devices—be they fougasses or Claymores or anti-vehicular explosive charges.

The first five fougasses were wired into the panel soon after it was tested. Using her artistic talent, Mary added numbers and diagrams of the expected fans of effect for the fougasses to the sector painting next to the window where the “Mr. Destructo” control panel was placed. All the operator had to do was spot a target, consult the sector painting, and hit the correspondingly numbered button. A child could handle it. So a child couldn’t handle it, Kevin had included an electrical key switch to the panel. This key acted as a master cutoff for the motorcycle battery that powered the panel. The battery was constantly trickle-charged by the house’s twelve-volt DC power system.

Still concerned about the threat of vehicles crashing through the chain-link fence surrounding the house, Todd asked Mike to coordinate the construction of a trench completely surrounding the fence. This upgrade was suggested to Todd by Kevin Lendel. The trench, which was affectionately referred to as “the moat” by most of the group members, took the entire work force of the group a week of hard labor to dig.

Consulting one of his “five series”Army Engineer manuals, Mike specified that in order to be effective, the trench should be in a sloping L-shape. The short end of the L was a vertical wall on the side closest to the fence, while the gradual upward sloping part of the trench faced outward. The trench was sixty inches deep at its deepest point. The total width was nine feet. A narrow wooden footbridge covered with some half-inch plywood was positioned over the trench in front of the gate.

In a private conference with Mike, Todd expressed his continuing concerns about another attack by the band of looters. He told Mike, “I guess that we’ve done all that we can, under the circumstances. I’d feel better if we were able to put up some antipersonnel barbed wire, but there’s just none available. If I’d only thought to buy some surplus concertina wire, or maybe some civilian razor wire. The surplus stuff was real cheap, too. I could have bought it for practically scrap metal prices. It must be worth a fortune, now.”

He and Mike then shared a now familiar facial expression with their jaws gaping. In unison they chanted, “Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.” After some consideration of numerous alternatives including pungi stakes, Todd and Mike decided to install “tangle foot” wire.

Mike gave a quick briefing to his assembled crew of workers. “Okay, the idea behind tangle foot is to slow down anybody trying to rush your position. In this case, it’s the house. What we’ll be doing is driving metal fence T-posts into the ground all over the yard inside the fence in a semi-random pattern, but no more than ten feet apart. Next, we’ll be stringing baling wire at random heights between six inches and forty inches off the ground between all of the fence posts. It forms a sort of giant spiderweb. This way, anyone who manages to get over the fence won’t be able to just dash up to the side of the house. The tangle foot will slow them down considerably, forcing them to cut it, or step over it, or crawl under each strand. During this interval, we’ll have more of an opportunity to spot them and take them out.”With all available hands at work, the construction of the tangle foot array took only three hours.

With the new security measures in place, the Group waited anxiously for several weeks for another attack by the same band of brigands that had come before. Eventually, they were not quite as nervous, but the attitude at the retreat would never be the same as before the attack.