Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

7. Paperwork

L. Roy Martin had purchased his Bloomfield, New Mexico, plant just eight months before the Crunch. His reputation as a maverick Texas oilman meant that the purchase of the troubled refinery for cash and stock didn’t raise many eyebrows. The plant had been temporarily shut down by Western Refining in 2010, mostly because of insufficient feedstock in the vicinity of Bloomfield. Since then, under new ownership by a “green energy” consortium, it had been reopened, but was operating at less than half of its full capacity, with frequent layoffs and rumors of a permanent shutdown. Martin bought the moribund plant for pennies on the dollar. Most industry analysts surmised that he planned to bring it back to full operation with a couple of long-distance pipelines. The purchase announcement also made just passing mention that Martin Holdings planned to increase the refinery’s co-generation capacity.

But the news that did start rumors in Bloomfield was that the Martin family had purchased a 120-acre cattle ranch and three 20-acre ranchettes, each with modest homes. All four of these properties were on the same road as the 285-acre refining plant. A 3,000-square-foot tan metal shop building was added to the 120-acre place, which by then had been nicknamed “Martin’s Mystery Ranch” by the locals. It was a mystery why Martin would sell his 8,000-square-foot home in a fashionable Houston neighborhood and move his family to a 1,500-square-foot 1950s-era ranch house. One of the rumors was that the house had been quickly transformed to nearly 3,000 square feet after remodeling.

The ranch was better known for its natural gas output than its beef production. There were three low-production gas wellheads dotted across the place. From the S-Bar-L ranch house, the view of the San Juan Mountains far in the distance (across the state line, in Colorado) was overwhelmed by the view of the Bloomfield plant’s cracking towers and holding tanks only a half mile away. At night, the sky glowed from the light of the excess fractions being burned off.

To explain his family’s relocation, L. Roy said that he was winding down to retirement, that he wanted a slower pace of life, and that he wanted to personally oversee the operation of the Bloomfield plant, especially since this was his first refinery. (All of his previous experience had been in drilling and oil field development.) Despite these low-key public statements, there were rumors buzzing of L. Roy Martin opening up new oil fields in various parts of the Four Corners. Why else would a famed Texas oilman with a background in oil exploration move his family bag and baggage to the middle of nowhere? And why would he buy a dumpy old house out in the sagebrush when he could afford to build a mansion on the south bank of the San Juan River? It just didn’t match the public’s expectations of a Texas oilman who owned a Cessna Citation private jet, a pair of Hummer H1s, a Shelby Cobra, a restored 1963 Corvette, and a dozen motorcycles.

The Bloomfield plant was nearly thirty years old and fairly standard for a modern refinery, being set up for crude distillation, hydrotreating of naphtha and distillate, re-forming units for aviation and automobile high-octane gasoline, and fluid catalytic cracking units. The only unusual things about it were its close proximity to the San Juan River, and that it had polymerization units to convert liquefied petroleum gas into gasoline. Most of the plant’s production was from local “Four Corners Sweet” crude oil, but some came from natural gas.

L. Roy (or “El Rey” as some of the locals soon called him) was sixty-two years old when the Crunch hit. He had seen it coming but still felt underprepared for its severity. Martin’s younger brother, his brother-in-law, and his first cousin-all Martin Holdings employees-took up residence at the three contiguous twenty-acre ranches. They also embarked on rush-job additions and remodels, albeit less grandiose than the work at the S-Bar-L ranch house. Even though they were on local grid power supplied by the Farmington Electric Utility System (FEUS), all four ranches were soon equipped with identical pairs of Onan twelve-kilowatt generators with natural-gas-fueled engines. Several of Martin’s petroleum engineers also got in on the purchase, buying additional backup generators for their own homes at a bargain group purchase price. Like the grounds of the refinery, Martin’s ranch was dotted with sagebrush and rabbit brush.

Southwest of Farmington was the largest agricultural project in northwestern New Mexico. The Navajo tribe owned the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI) farms. There, the tribe grew enormous quantities of alfalfa hay, corn, pinto beans, pumpkins, potatoes, grains, barley, and onions. Close to sixty thousand acres were under cultivation in circular-irrigated fields when the Crunch hit. The majority of the water for NAPI came from Navajo Dam, about thirty-five miles away. The reservoir pushed back twenty miles. The project that got the water to NAPI included a huge tunnel that was completed in the mid-1960s.

Andrew Laine knew that it was horribly bad timing to have been named head of the three-man “Rear Party” for the Battalion. But as the Property Book Officer (PBO), he was the logical choice. The additional duty of PBO has always been dreaded by Army officers. There are very few brownie points to be earned and umpteen ways to mess up as a PBO, just for failing to pay very close attention to detail.

It had become standard practice to rotate troops and small arms but not vehicles whenever a unit left the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) theater of operations. The logistics of moving vehicles with each unit rotation were monumental, so lateral transfers of vehicles and heavy weapons made sense. This process also made a tremendous amount of work for supply NCOs and PBOs. While the rest of the unit rotated back to Germany, Andy, the battalion’s E-8 supply NCOIC, and a PLL clerk would stay behind to hand off both the containerized housing unit (CHU) billets and the many items designated for lateral transfer to the new battalion.

In the case of his unit, a Stryker battalion, a unit shuffle was a PBO’s nightmare. By his unit’s table of organization and equipment (TO&E), there were dozens of lateral transfers to accomplish, including the Stryker wheeled APCs, each with their complement of TOW missile launchers, 25mm chain guns, frequency-hopping VHF radios, thermal sights, and so forth. Each of these items had a unique serial number. There were also spare engines, generator trailers, tentage, camouflage nets, and the umpteen other “fiddly bits,” as Master Sergeant Rezendes called them.

Word had come down from the incoming unit commander that he wanted every serial number double-checked. After all, who could blame him? It was the PBO’s job, but it was the incoming commander’s responsibility. A $196 million property book was nothing to be trifled with, especially when the loss of just one sensitive item would be deemed “non-career-enhancing.” Ultimately, it would be the outgoing and incoming battalion commanders who would answer for any discrepancies. Everything had to be accounted for, right down to two radios that were currently off for depot-level repair.

Before the main party of the unit departed, Laine walked into his commander’s office, carrying the Electronic Property Book (EPB). Colonel Ed Olds looked up from his desk with his characteristic squint. Olds asked, “So, how are those laterals going?” Andy spent the next few minutes giving him the details. Colonel Olds leaned backed in his chair and probed, “Any unresolved discrepancies?”

“None yet, sir, but if I find anything, you’ll be the first to know. The good news is that if it is something minor, with all the IED incidents, we can easily write something off as a combat loss.”

Olds laughed and said, “Let me tell you a little story from my ancient history, Andy. I remember back in the early days of the Desert Shield deployment-this was months before the actual Desert Storm invasion-there was a UH-60 helicopter that went down in a sand storm. The crew got out okay but the aircraft burned up. Six months later, when the IG followed up on the accident report paperwork, they discovered that there was supposedly more than two thousand pounds of miscellaneous equipment on board that aircraft: radios, starlight scopes, an MWR television and VCR, two gen-sets, you name it. Everything but the kitchen sink. According to all the paperwork-with all the i’s properly dotted and the t’s crossed, mind you-there was gear from every company in the brigade on board that bird. If what was on that manifest was actually on board, there was no way that Blackhawk could have got off the ground. And in fact it wouldn’t have even fit in the available space.”

Olds laughed. “Every 76 Yankee in the brigade used that crash to make up for years’ worth of missing inventory items. Thankfully, the IG team kinda thought it was a bit of jest and gave it a wink and a nod. Fact is, there was a rather droll statement included in the after-action, somethin’ like ‘The aircraft’s high takeoff weight may have contributed to this incident.’”

Laine and Olds both laughed this time. Andy took a breath and then asked: “Sir, given the deteriorating security situation in our AO, I’d like permission for the rear party to keep our issued weapons with us, using hand receipts. We’ll be here at least a week and possibly a lot longer, depending on when we can find transport. We all know how irregular the MAC flights are getting.”

Colonel Olds bit his lower lip and asked, “Can we do that by regulation?”

“Yes, sir. I just researched it today. Paragraph 9 of AR 190-11 allows detachments to travel armed at the local commander’s discretion. And, of course, AR 190-14, chapters 2 and 4 apply.”

Olds rubbed his chin.

Laine added, “With your permission, sir, I’ll prepare hand receipts for each of us in the rear party.”

“Just don’t lose them, or it’ll be nearly as bad as losing the weapons themselves. That would be a major goat rope.”

“Understood. Tell you what, sir: just in case, I’ll make a backup copy of each hand receipt, also for your signature, and I’ll leave them in the TOC Crypto safe.”

“That would be prudent, Andrew. Make it so.”

Andy rolled his eyes as he walked out of the office. Colonel Olds was famous for that phrase best known from Star Trek. Behind his back, some of the junior officers jokingly called him “Colonel Picard.”

It was 90 degrees outside. As he walked back across the quadrangle, Andy wondered when the weather would change. The standing joke in his unit was that Afghanistan had 180 days of summer and 180 days of winter, leaving two days each year for fall and three days for spring.

Some things in the Army were still done the old-fashioned way, especially when units were deployed overseas. One time-honored tradition was preparing hand receipts on a 1980s-vintage ball-head Selectric typewriter that was still soldiering on. Just as he had been instructed, Andy typed two sets of DA Form 3749s for the three M4 carbines, carefully keying in the nomenclature and serial numbers. But he intentionally left off the standard ruler-drawn ballpoint pen line with “Nothing Follows,” something that is always added as the last step before getting signatures.

Just before close of business for the day, Andy took the six forms to Colonel Olds. “Two sets, as you directed, sir.” Olds nodded and signed them with hardly a glance or a word.

After the commander had left for the day, Laine returned to his desk and took just one of the pair of forms that was made out in his own name, put it in his typewriter, and added a line that read “Pistol, M11 Compact (SIG P228), 9mm” along with his newly purchased pistol’s serial number. Finally, he added the slashed “Nothing Follows” lines to all six forms. The subterfuge was that simple. Now Laine could carry home the SIG pistol with “official” paperwork, yet have a second set of paperwork to also make the pistol disappear.

Back in his CHU, Andy realized that if the SIG was going to be his only self-defense tool for his travel back to New Mexico, then he needed to research its capabilities. So he brought his laptop to the MWR tent and logged on to the Internet. A quick Bing.com search led him to JBMBallistics.com. There he entered the values for standard M882 9mm ball ammunition with 112-grain bullets. Running the ballistic calculator, he ran the bullet drop values for 100, 200, 300, and 400 yards.

He was surprised to see that at 400 yards he would have to hold over-aiming at a point far above his target-a whopping 228 inches. He determined that was roughly three and a third man-heights. He was also disappointed to see that the energy of the bullets decreased from 451 foot/pounds at the muzzle to just 176 foot/pounds at 400 yards. Andy jotted down the yardage and bullet drop values.

Back at his CHU, he printed out a small drop table with a fine point Sharpie pen on an index card, trimmed it to fit on the top of one of his magazine pouch flaps, and taped it on. He knew that he’d be horribly outclassed in a long-range gun battle with anyone armed with a center-fire rifle, but at least he wouldn’t be in the dark about how much to hold over.

Andy and Lars had been taught about long-range pistol shooting by their father, five years before the Crunch, Robie had attended a class by Cope Reynolds of Southwest Shooting Authority in Luna. Robie was enthusiastic about sharing his new skills. After completing the class, Robie could hit a man-size target at 250 yards with roughly 50 percent of his shots from his Lahti 9mm pistol. When Andy came home to visit their father on leave, Robie showed both of his sons the basics of what he’d learned in the course. Soon they were scoring fairly consistent hits on a twenty-four-inch steel disk at 200 yards.

Andy was officially released for his return to Germany, but he was in limbo. He was desperate to find transport-any transport-out of Afghanistan. The Military Airlift Command (MAC) flights had already become less frequent because of the ongoing troop drawdown, but more recently flights had been nearly suspended. The reason cited was the new Fuel Austerity Program (FAP) that was mandated by Congress. Cutting the military fuel budget by 80 percent left most naval ships idling at port and most transport planes grounded. The U.S. military’s new catchphrase was “Billions for bailouts, but not a nickel for fuel.”

After more than a week of begging on the phone and texting, Andy was finally allotted a seat on a German Luftwaffe C-160 transport. To make this flight, Laine had to be at the military side of the Kabul airport in just five hours. This would be impossible by road travel, so Andy called in a favor with the FOB commander to prevail on a West Point classmate who was the commander of the nearby 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which had organic air assets. Just forty minutes after his call, an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter flown with an empty gunner’s seat touched down on the main pad at FOB Wolverine. The helicopter never shut down. It took a while to cram Laine’s gear into a cargo compartment and into the gunner’s seat, where Laine also sat. Unlike the older Cobra gunships, where the copilot/gunner sits in the rear, with the Apache, the copilot/gunner sits in the front seat. The pilot, a crusty CW4 named Halverson, gave Andy a nickel ride, winding up the main rotor and pulling pitch with gusto, making the tips of the main rotor come within five feet of the ground, and kicking up a substantial cloud of dust.

After getting his helmet on and figuring out the microphone switch, Andy exclaimed, “Thanks for the lift!”

“Not a prob, sir. I love making unscheduled flights like these. I just hope that someone’s willing to do the same for me when I’ve got my date with the Freedom Bird. Just enjoy the scenery and, uh, needless to say, keep your nose-picker off the controls-aside from the ‘Rambo mic switch’-and we’ll be on the ground in about thirty-five minutes.” That mention of the microphone switch referred to the red button atop most U.S. military helicopter control sticks. In a notorious movie gaffe that made military helicopter pilots groan, that was the button shown used for launching rockets.

“That sounds great! You are a gentleman and a scholar.” Andy felt a huge rush of emotion. He was finally headed home. Watching the landscape below, he mainly thought about Kaylee. He snapped almost fifty digital pictures of Afghan villages, typical walled family farm compounds, the outlines of ancient ruins, and, finally, the hazy skyline of Kabul. He clicked the red microphone switch and commented: “I wish my fiancée could see this.”

The warrant said, “No you don’t! Because if she were seeing this, then she’d be deployed here in the Big Sandbox.”

Laine laughed, “I suppose you’re right.”

Andy stood on the tarmac at Kabul International, watching the AH-64 fade to a speck in the distance. Even though it was now October, it still felt hot. He had a comfortable two hours before his Luftwaffe flight was scheduled to take off. He shouldered his pack and duffel and his M4 carbine, then walked over to the FLOPS shop-the new, dramatically scaled-down and consolidated U.S. Army Aviation Flight Operations Center, Kabul. There he quickly bummed a two-minute ride to the German hangars. Part of the route cut across an active taxiway, which was unnerving, but the specialist who was driving acted as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Just another day in the land of Kipling.

Checking in for the Luftwaffe flight was a breeze, even though he didn’t have a scrap of documentation for the flight itself, just his movement orders. All of the arrangements had been made by phone, and the German officers had gotten the word that he was expected. They handed him a complex itinerary marked Luftfahrt-Bundesamt with typical German date formats and dotted times. It had just his name and rank typed at the top, yet they repeatedly assured him that was all the documentation he needed for every leg of his journey: “Ja, ja, Herr Major. Das ist alles.”

Thinking about the SIG 9mm pistol buried near the bottom of his duffel, he felt a bit of anxiety. Strangely, even the obvious presence of his M4 carbine was not questioned. Since nearly all of the Heer troops around him carried Heckler & Koch G36 rifles, it didn’t look out of the ordinary. Some of these troops carried their rifles by their long top-carry handles, and this almost made Andy laugh. It looked like they were carrying attache cases. None of his bags were inspected. Only his military ID card and the flight itinerary sheet were checked.

The series of cargo shuttle flights, by way of Azerbaijan, took a grueling thirty-seven hours. The planes were too noisy for a comfortable conversation, and most of his fellow passengers-a mix of Heer ground troops and Luftwaffe airmen-seemed tipsy from preflight drinks. At least they shared Andy’s joy to be heading home.