Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

41. The Team

The next few days were hectic as Lars gathered his team and logistics. First on the list was borrowing a pair of crew cab pickup trucks, both with fifth-wheel-type trailer hitches, a horse trailer for one of them, and a flatbed trailer for the other. The owners gladly loaned them, knowing that they’d be helping to keep a looter army from invading their region. For impromptu camouflage, the trucks and the trailers were all hastily painted flat tan, with a few large irregular blotches in flat brown. This was done at the Garza Auto Collision shop in Aztec. Lars told Honore Garza to rush the job and specifically not to worry about overspray: “We don’t want any sharp lines or any distinct contrast: these have to blend in.” Garza took that literally, so there was paint on the edges of the windows, and even the tire sidewalls and license plates were painted tan.

Laine picked seven members, all military veterans, and most of them experienced horse riders. Six of them were ex-Army-including a medic-and one was a former Marine. All had served at least one combat tour in Iraq or Afghanistan and had combat arms specialties.

Four of them-Brian Baugh, Pat Redmond, Chad Stenerson, and Dave Escobar-were refinery employees. The other three were Bob Potts (a friend of the Laines from church), Johanna Visser (a South African-born former Army nurse who had more recently worked as an EMT), and Hector Ruiz (a friend of L. Roy Martin who he’d met through the local Rotary Club). With the exception of Laine, everyone on the team was single or divorced, and most had been E-4s or E-5s when they left the military. Hector Ruiz had been a tank commander and had left the army as an E-7. Ruiz was about Laine’s age. Lars had briefly toyed with the idea of including Shadrach Phelps in the team, but given his lack of combat experience he decided against it. He also rejected the idea of his brother Andy going on the mission. In the event that Lars didn’t return, someone would have to see after the ranch.

Two of the men had their own horses, and two had loaners. All were geldings or mares picked for good temperaments and dark markings. As Lars put it, “Paint horses need not apply.” Lars would ride Reuben’s horse, Scrappy, a milk-chocolate-brown gelding that was particularly calm around the sound of gunfire. Aside from a small white blaze between his eyes, Scrappy blended in almost as well as a deer.

Lars would have preferred complete uniformity of equipment, but the exigency of the situation didn’t allow them enough time to become familiar with new weapons. Lars and Pat Redmond (also a horseman) both had carbines chambered for 7.62x39mm (the AK-47 cartridge), while most of the others had .308 rifles-three M1As, a PTR HK91 clone, a DSA FAL clone, and a Saiga .308. The logistical mismatch was Johanna Visser, who carried a Galil 5.56. She had bought it because it was similar to the R4 rifle she had been issued by the SADF before she went to college.

In a perfect world, Lars would have had the squad members all carry rifles with fully interchangeable ammunition and magazines. Instead he put Hector Ruiz and the other two men with M1As together in the “infantry” team along with Bob Potts, who had the Saiga. At least three of them would have the chance to share magazines, and of course Potts could at least use loose .308 ammunition stripped from M1A magazines. It took a bit of begging and bribing, but each man on the team soon had at least eight spare loaded magazines. For his own fighting load, Laine decided to carry eleven spare magazines.

The medic, Johanna, was part of Laine’s cavalry team. They called themselves cavalry, but in actuality they’d operate as dragoons, fighting dismounted. Although Scrappy was accustomed to the sound of gunfire, they didn’t have time to train the other horses. In essence, the horses were planned as little more than quick getaway vehicles. There was no way to predict how the horses would react to the sight of Molotovs exploding and fusillades of gunfire.

All of the men wore ACU desert digital pattern camouflage fatigues. The ACU pattern was generally disliked, since it looked like a gray blob from a distance. This was the main reason that they had been replaced by the U.S. Army with the multicam OCP uniform. But ACUs did blend in fairly well in sagebrush country, which predominated where they were heading. Also, by all wearing the same uniforms, they’d have the advantage of being able to quickly recognize each other from a distance.

They day after the team was selected, they began training. They started with patrolling formations, carrying unloaded rifles. At the same time the horsemen practiced moving both mounted and on foot. By the afternoon the squad’s movement and hand signals began to look professional, but not as smooth as Laine would have liked. They next practiced ambushes and immediate action drills, such as reacting to an ambush, reacting to ground and aerial flares, and breaking contact.

Their trigger time began the next day at Laine’s ranch. Each rifle was meticulously zeroed for its owner. There was also time spent familiarizing each other with the peculiarities of handling all of the weapons, in the event someone had to pick up and use someone else’s rifle. Next, Lars passed on a few practical tips about night fighting. One of the most important of these was: “You may not be able to see your sights well. So, if in doubt, hold low, since the natural tendency is to shoot high, at night.”

Late in the afternoon, they were scheduled to drive to the refinery, to get a briefing and demonstration of the Molotov cocktails Little Ricky had been cooking up. Just after the team arrived, Lopez had them form a semicircle and explained, “If I had a few more days, I could have probably worked up some thermite grenades, but the clock is ticking, so these will have to do.” He pulled out a mason jar filled with a honeylike substance.

Ricardo Lopez had perfected a flameless design that was much safer to use than traditional “lit-rag” Molotov cocktails. It was based on a design that had been described to him by his great-uncle, who had served as an adviser in Angola in the 1970s. Working in an open area for safety, wearing a respirator and static-grounded boots, Lopez first created a large batch of thickened gasoline. All through this process, an assistant with several fire extinguishers was standing by. Lopez did his thickening in an open-top fifty-five-gallon drum that was half filled with gasoline. This gas had been decanted from the top of a larger drum that had been allowed to settle. The goal was to get pure gasoline with no water.

Lopez and his assistants threw large quantities of foam pellets and scrap Styrofoam from shipping boxes into the drum and then stirred it with a length of broomstick. A surprisingly large quantity of Styrofoam was needed before the gas began to thicken. The stirring continued as more and more Styrofoam was added and quickly dissolved. Gradually the mixture thickened to the desired consistency, about that of molasses. Their end result was about thirty gallons of thickened fuel, which Ricardo dubbed “the Poor Man’s Napalm.”

Lopez then brought several stacked cases of one-quart mason home-canning jars to his open lab. Wearing gloves and a clear plastic face shield, he opened a carboy of automobile battery acid. He carefully decanted one half cup of the concentrated sulfuric acid into each mason jar and then filled the rest of each with thickened gasoline. They were then sealed with standard mason jar lids and ring. In case any of the acid might have dripped onto the exterior of the jars, they were each rinsed thoroughly, twice, using one of the refinery’s portable emergency eye-wash fountains. After they had dried, two large rubber bands were slid onto the middle of each jar.

Back at Building 3, wearing a fresh pair of rubber gloves, Lopez made a saturated solution of potassium chlorate and put it in a broiler pan. He then soaked eleven-inch sheets of printer paper that had been cut into four-inch-wide strips. Then he laid out the strips on the pavement outside of the building, to allow them to completely dry. These were then stored in Ziploc bags. He noted that for safety it was very important to store the chlorated paper and the bottles separately, only attaching them just before use.

After successfully testing a couple of the Molotovs at the Bloomfield plant’s “back forty,” Ricardo put on a demonstration. “When you are ready for ignition,” he explained, “slip a sheet of the chlorate paper under the rubber band. Then you just shake it to mix the sulfuric acid into the gasoline. Since these are dissimilar liquids, the acid won’t stay in suspension too long-sorta like your oil-and-vinegar salad dressing. But it just takes un poquito droplet of the H2SO4 to touch the paper, and you get a flame.” Hefting one of the paper-wrapped jars he said, “Like so….” He shook a jar briefly and then lobbed it sixty feet, smashing it on the ground, where it immediately burst into a huge ball of flame and sent a black mushroom cloud skyward. There were shouts, hoots, and applause. Next, using his Vector V-93 clone, Lopez demonstrated how one of the Molotovs could easily be set off at a distance. He missed with his first shot, but the second one resulted in another gratifying ball of flame.

Each of the men on Laine’s team was given three dummy Molotovs filled with water and one live one for practice. All of them did well except for Bob Potts, who was below-average height and had a weak throwing arm. He laughed at his inadequate throws and said: “Well, then I’ll just have to get up close and personal, won’t I?”

Laine’s plan was straightforward: “Okay, we’ll plan on two Molotovs for each car or truck, and say five or six for each armored vehicle.” For commo gear, they used short-range tactical MURS handhelds. They were short on night-vision equipment, but there was no way to round up any more on short notice. Starlight scopes were more precious than gold in the new economy.

They carried 340 gallons of gasoline in five-gallon Scepter cans. The cases of Molotovs were strapped down on the flatbed trailer and covered with a brown canvas tarp. Another eight Scepter cans full of gasoline went into the bed of each pickup.

As a prearranged signal, the out-of-town teams from New Mexico and northeastern Arizona had blue rags hung on their radio antennas and front bumpers, for identification as “friendlies.”

The drive west to Prescott was tense but relatively uneventful. It was eerie seeing long stretches of road that were completely deserted. Passing through each town was particularly stressful. There were roadblocks in Shiprock and another at the Tuba City junction, but in both instances clearance had been arranged in advance via HF radio. They were waved through these roadblocks with shouts of “Good luck!” and “Get some!”