Deep Winter

And we're in print.

2018-04-15T11:11:00.001-07:00

Distance is now (or will be very shortly) available as hardcopy and in Kindle versions at Amazon. Enjoy!

Kindle version now available!

2018-02-25T16:49:00.002-08:00

Just OK'd the Kindle version of Distance. Print version should be available soon as well.

Take care, all!

T

Distance, Chapter 60

2014-07-04T12:51:00.002-07:00

Monday, January Fifteenth

7:40 a.m.

Southwest of Montrose, Iowa

“You make one move and we’ll blow you in half,” the soldier growled as Doug tried to remain hidden. “Garcia, Benson, zip him up and search him.”

Doug’s hands were pulled behind his back and a heavy zip tie slipped over his wrists and pulled tightly. Hands roughly grabbed his filthy jacket collar and belt, ripped him off the ground and to his feet.

“Got any weapons on you, asshole?”

“No sir,” Doug replied, exhausted.

“Sir! He fuckin’ called me sir!” the soldier in charge said with no small amount of glee. “Get the Ell Tee up here. We got us a brain here.”

“Brain?” Doug asked.

“Yeah, asshole. You can apparently think. That in the S.A. makes you pretty fuckin’ rare.”

“I’m not S.A.,” Doug said.

“Right. You’re wearing what passes for an S.A. uniform, you’ve got S.A. piece-of-crap gear and a God-damned Russian helmet! You’re way behind the front lines, and a bunch of your S.A. buddies are roasting on a spit in the bowels of Hell from action about a mile from here. You probably tossed your weapons when you ran out of ammo, took off and hid. The Intel boys will have some fun with you. Now, get your ass moving,” the soldier said as the men behind him jabbed him in the back with their battle rifles.

Doug was marched out of the ineffective brush-covered hiding place, across what had once been a farm field. Snow pelted him in the face. He couldn’t feel his feet as he stumbled forward. The men behind him made comments about what would happen to him, once the interrogators were done with him. He didn’t know what to think as he moved ahead numbly, eyes not really seeing the ground in front of him. He hadn’t eaten real food in five days.

The road appeared suddenly, a snow-filled depression between farm fields; a handful of U.S. Army vehicles nestled between the hills. Doug noticed the dents; the roughly patched bodywork and bullet holes as he was loaded on the floor of a ‘truck’ version. Six men piled in around him, all placed their boots on him as they drove away.

He’d been almost a month in what he regarded as captivity, taken by the S.A. while heading to one of the observation posts on the northeast edge of the Farm. That December Twenty-second, everything changed.

The S.A. patrol caught him flat-footed, moving across open terrain just after dusk, only fifty feet from the unmanned observation post, which apparently remained undetected. He’d been thinking about the report that the Weerstand had just received of the S.A. nuclear missiles shot down by the U.S. earlier in the month, and the impact of the detonations in Arkansas. Fifteen thousand Arkansans died in the blasts instead of millions of dead or injured citizens of San Antonio and Houston.

A Weerstand linked cell had been exposed to the plume only hours after the attack, losing three of five to severe radiation poisoning within a week, the remaining two lingering a few days longer. A rainstorm they’d passed through contained the fallout that killed them.

One warhead ground-detonated on the banks of the Arkansas River, just west of Clarksville, obliterating the town and its remaining residents and creating a huge radioactive plume that spread to the southeast, catching the Weerstand contacts. The second, an airburst, detonated ten miles east of Fayetteville over the small town of Huntsville, vaporizing it as well, and sending radiation thousands of feet into the atmosphere and thousands of miles downwind. Doug was thinking about the impacts of the radioactivity on farming when five rifles were pointed at him from less than twenty feet away.

The men quickly forced him to the ground, where he was stripped of his winter clothing and boots, and left him to re-dress in discarded filthy clothing and torn, worn out boots. His rifle, handgun and pack were of course taken by their leader, and the remaining men were unquestioningly following all orders that their ‘Sergeant’ gave them. ‘Perfect RNEW subjects,’ Doug thought. He was thrown into the back of an old truck, blindfolded, and spent what he guessed was an hour driving through the Iowa countryside. At that point, he knew that he’d never see Julie again.

Eventually, they arrived at the town of New London, only seven or eight miles from Mt. Pleasant. Doug was thrown into a motel room, void of furnishings except for a single cot. The room did have marginal heat and electricity, along with a bathroom and running water.

He spent the night there, alone, without food, sleepless and utterly despondent. The windows of the room were barred and the door locked from the outside. The first morning, the door was opened, a bag of RNEW products thrown into his room, and the door closed immediately.

“So this is how they do it,” Doug said to himself, wondering if he should just eat it and put his former humanity behind him.

The packaging was from his own plant in Des Moines, all familiar products, all with the known combination codes molded or printed right on the packaging, if one knew what the icons meant. He selected non-reactive items from the packages, dumping the rest into the toilet, which obviously hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time.

Doug spent four days in the room without contact, but with regular supplies of RNEW-laced food. On the fifth day, he was ordered to patrol, handed an AK-47 with a duct-taped stock and three magazines. The ‘Sergeant’ who had captured him didn’t refer to Doug or any of the other men by name or number, just expletive-laced labels. He got in line with the rest of the men and headed out, feigning obedient compliance, and adopting the shuffling manner of the RNEW consumer. None spoke as they headed down the street on that first day; few words were ever exchanged on orders of a ‘Sergeant’. Doug noted that any ‘Sergeant’ giving orders received unquestioning obedience.

New London might’ve had as many as two thousand citizens Pre-War, that number was now less than five hundred, and decreasing every day through deaths and other ‘disappearances’, which Doug knew about through overheard conversations between ‘Sergeants’ and ‘officers’.

Their assigned patrol route ‘protected’ the rail line through New London, and their ‘HQ’ was the tiny police station not far from a series of grain elevators. The grain elevators had long since been emptied Doug learned, and any remaining equipment stripped and sent ‘East’ for ‘use by the State’.

For sixteen hours a day, Doug and the other ‘fellowmen’ on his shift walked the mile of tracks in a predictable loop: Railroad tracks to Pine Street, then to Main, then back to the police station. Anyone on the street was immediately challenged and harassed, and within a few days Doug could see people hiding until the S.A. patrols passed, crossing behind them a block or two, going about their lives, such as they were. The ‘downtown’ buildings, old but once well-kept brick buildings dated to the mid-eighteen hundreds, and showed no signs of business activity or life at all. Snow on the streets showed a few paths that the remaining residents used, no vehicle traffic had been seen since the S.A. occupied the town. One old tavern building had apparently been the scene of a fire-fight; hundreds of bullet holes adorned the burned out shell. Another burned out shell had once been the City office building, probably once home to the mayor’s offices or administration. The fire had spread to other structures on the block, leaving only the facades intact after the roofs collapsed.

Doug’s heart ached for Julie, their baby due in early February; his despair washing over him each night without fail. He knew that she’d be grieving his loss, with him ‘going missing’ probably worse than knowing that he’d been taken by death. The small farmhouse would not be manageable by Julie alone in advanced pregnancy, and so he presumed she’d moved in with Peter and Molly, or perhaps with Arie and Maria. There could be no escape from the S.A. until the weather enabled him to slip away and not be tracked in the snow, but he’d do so without a food supply to take with him—the S.A. only gave their troops enough food to consume at that meal and no more; he had no idea where supplies were stored…so effectively there was none to steal without risking immediate execution, and none of the fully affected RNEW consumers would generate enough initiative to even dream of getting more food without orders from a ‘Sergeant’.

Rail traffic was sparse and unpredictable, with large trains filled with loads of looted equipment, vehicles and bulk goods moving east; and the occasional fifteen- or twenty-car train moving military equipment west. Days could pass without a single train, and then five or six might be running through New London in a matter of hours.

Doug knew that military equipment from France, Germany and Russia had been identified by the Weerstand, in addition to some American and Canadian vehicles. Aircraft, only seen above New London a few times in December, all seemed to be smaller fighter aircraft. After the coming of the New Year, he’d not seen any aircraft whatsoever.

On January twelfth or thirteenth (he’d lost track of the days), troop trains moved through New London, headed east, and as the last train moved out, Doug and the rest of the New London contingent were unceremoniously loaded aboard.

The men around Doug of course were all RNEW-controlled, but their ‘look’ was more than just the addled state of the combination of the drugs; there was something more: defeat, dejection, fatigue. There were no ‘Sergeants’ in the cold, worn out passenger car. No one spoke, no questions were asked, no chatter.

Within a few miles, the train slowed to a crawl. Doug was seated on the south side of the train, and noted that five other trains of the six took a siding at some sort of Army installation. Doug’s train, the last in the line, passed by the others, continuing east through the town of Burlington. The train then turned south along the Mississippi, crawling along for another forty-five minutes, and then slowed further in the small town of Sandusky. Their ‘Sergeants’ from New London appeared from the car in front of them, and ordered the men from New London off the train.

“You’re being reassigned,” the least pleasant of the ‘Sergeant’s’ said to the twenty men. “Now move!”

The men quickly grabbed their rifles and left the train car, stumbling on the icy steps at the bottom. Doug glanced around at the terrain and nearby homes as the ‘fellowmen’ assembled in formation. The train pulled out and left them in the cold afternoon sun.

“You will be guarding an airport of vital importance to the State! You will be based there! If you see any civilian at any time, you are to shoot them on sight! You will raid every single building we come to on the way to that airport! Anything deemed of value to the State will be returned to me immediately. Any theft for the gain of an individual will result in your immediate execution! You will kill anyone and everyone you come across! You will then burn every building to the ground. MOVE!”

In New London, Doug had never heard any orders remotely like those just given. Something had changed.

There was little left in the little hamlet of scattered homes worth seizing on behalf of the State of America; none were occupied, and all were afire within a half hour of the arrival of the S.A.

With a few bundles of loot, the S.A. marched the mile or so to the Keokuk Municipal Airport, less than twenty miles away from the Segher Farm. Doug’s one surreptitious looted item was a cheap digital watch.

The small airport had been abandoned when the S.A. ruled private aircraft illegal and had seized all aircraft—commercial and private—for the good of the State. Within an hour of their arrival, they’d broken into every building, established their quarters in the old aircraft rental office, and Doug heard one of the ‘Sergeant’s’ radio S.A. Command that the airport was ready for use. Not long afterward, four attack helicopters landed and a convoy that included two former ‘AmeriMart’ semi-trucks arrived--loaded with ammunition, spare parts, ground crews and fuel.

The helicopters gave Doug an evil chill. He and Roeland had nearly been blown to pieces by an S.A. chopper just after guiding the U.S. Army troops across the Missouri border in early December, the day after the S.A. had launched their nuclear missiles at the U.S. leadership.

Roeland led the U.S. troops south after Weerstand operatives contacted friendly forces to the south. They’d crossed into Missouri, ironically ordered to rendezvous at Rebel’s Cove Conservation Area.

The twenty-mile trip on snow covered farm roads during daylight hours was extremely risky and everyone knew it. Word had come through though that the S.A. was aggressively searching for U.S. troops west of Des Moines, and working east as one of the Weerstand cells had been compromised, giving up word that U.S. units were operating in several Iowa locations. The rendezvous was completed quickly and efficiently, with Doug and Roeland heading north and east immediately.

Their luck had turned though and they were spotted by a low-flying S.A. drone that immediately circled their position. An incoming round hit the trees just above the truck, spattering the cab with shrapnel, moments before an unseen helicopter passed over them from the rear and wheeled around for a shot. Roeland slowed the truck under the heavy trees, they dumped their gear and then set the truck on cruise control and they jumped, Roeland meeting up with Doug a moment later, and moved into the deep brush and snow. The second pass from the helo came from directly in front of the truck. The detonation was surprisingly large, far bigger than that of the first missile. The drone made lazy circles over the burning wreck and the helicopter for the moment disappeared.

“We’ve gotta move. My bet is inside of ten minutes, this place will be crawling,” Roeland said.

“If that drone is up there and has infra-red, we’re dead. It might just be hunting for us, even now.”

“I know…and our tracks lead us here. If they are serious about finding us, they will. Let’s move.”

“What kind of helo was that? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Doug asked.

“Russian-built. It’s called the Black Shark,” Roeland said as he hurried into the brush. “A number of countries operated them, Pre-War. Jake warned me about them.”

Neither was dressed in snow camouflage but their winter gear wasn’t a complete failure in the heavy grey brush and understory. They headed east to another large conservation area which had the benefit of even thicker cover, allowing them to be well concealed beneath the snow-covered trees and brush. Before heading into what was essentially a snow cave, they could see two S.A. helicopters circling the location of their burning truck, working out from that site in a circular search spiral.

“How far to the Farm?” Doug asked as he moved further under the brush, expecting to find some wildlife hibernating within.

“Ten or twelve miles. And, across the river,” Roeland said. “We might be really screwed here, Doug.”

“Yep.”

“Those things are probably second only to the Apache. Pure hunter-killer.”

They stayed deep under cover overnight, breaking cover at first light on a crystal clear, subfreezing morning. Their ‘patrol packs’ included the minimum equipment for a few days in the field and a winter sleeping bag, which was barely adequate to the task.

Aircraft south of them slowed their progress well into the second day. After the helicopters left the area, they moved north through the brush and trees, crossing back into Iowa and hoping to scout potential routes across the Des Moines River.

Heading nearly due north, they arrived at the Des Moines just upstream of Keosauqua through a heavily wooded state park, about five miles from the Farm. Roeland spotted dozens of S.A. through his binoculars, covering both sides of the Main Street bridge.

“No-go this way,” Roeland said, stowing the binoculars. “Let’s move back a few hundred yards. Once we’re a little deeper into dusk, we’ll move across the road, head east and parallel J40,” Roeland said, showing the route on a waterproof map. “We’ll almost certainly be crossing through a bunch of drainages, so we’ll need to take our time and stay dry…getting wet in this weather will kill us. With any luck, we can cross at Bentonsport. There’s no airport there, not much of anything actually. Two bridges, one for vehicles, the other foot traffic and bikes back in the day. We could ford the river there, but we’ll freeze to death if we have to do that.”

“Figure what, a mile per hour?” Doug asked.

“If we’re lucky. Let’s go. It’s getting darker than I thought it would this early.”

Five and a half hours and one MRE later, they approached the J40 bridge over the Des Moines. Approaching slowly from the west, they could both hear the S.A. guards complaining about their duty, while warming themselves around a fifty-five gallon burn-can, which had the advantage of night-blinding the guards to anything outside of the meager light from the warming fire. Six guards were present, but the north end of the bridge was shrouded in darkness. Roeland and Doug move under starlight.

“Two thousand feet that-a-way, and we should find the old bridge,” Roeland said. “Six miles or so more, and we’re home.”

The old, truss-style bridge was well over a hundred years old and was apparently deemed unimportant militarily to the S.A. Doug and Roeland leap-frogged across the first two spans, and then quickly traversed the remaining sections, finding no obstacles. They moved quickly through the hamlet unchallenged. The scattered homes in the area were all dark, only a few vehicle tracks were present in the snow, none of them recent. They approached the main road, again Road J40, carefully studying it before crossing into the woods on the far side. They were just starting to stand up and begin their crossing when lights appeared from the east, coming from the town of Bonaparte.

“Well, shit,” Roeland said. “Back to cover.”

They both moved into the deep vegetation quickly, sprawling flat under the snow-covered branches.

The convoy was enormous, far larger than anything either had seen previously. Flatbeds with tanks, flatbeds with armored personnel carriers, artillery, semi-trucks and passenger buses moved non-stop for nearly an hour. No trailing ‘guard’ vehicle or convoy escorts trailed it. When it passed, the night was again perfectly silent.

“I guess we’ve now seen what the S.A. has for an army,” Roeland said.

“The question is, why in God’s name are they in rural Iowa?” Doug replied.

“You can bet they aren’t only in rural Iowa. This road isn’t a quick way to get anywhere. Maybe that’s why they’re on it—maybe the U.S. can’t watch everything all the time since the satellites were taken out.”

“Lot of ‘maybes’ there,” Doug said.

“Let’s move. I’d like to find some shelter for a few hours. I’m about done for. We gotta get warm.”

Quite by accident, they found a long-abandoned cabin within the next large swath of woodland, a mile and a half north of Bentonsport. The cabin was boarded up save for the cellar entry, and weeds and brush had grown up around it, illustrating it’s disuse. The cellar doors opened easily, rotted wood pulling away from the heavy iron hinges.

“This just saved our asses,” Roeland said, tiny LED flashlight illuminating the rough cellar.

“Ship’s ladder to the main floor,” Doug said, shining his own flashlight around. There should be a fireplace up there.”

The cabin apparently hadn’t been used in more than fifty years, ancient magazines and newspapers piled near the fieldstone fireplace, the four rooms clear of useable furniture. What remained made decent firewood for a small warming fire, allowing both men to sleep for a few precious hours.

The morning dawned clear and cold, but by the time they’d checked their equipment and packed up, winds picked up from the west, driving the fallen snow into the air and obscuring their views across the fields and into the woods, much as a ground fog might.

Reaching the farm adjacent to the Segher property, none of the customary watch positions were manned, raising an enormous red flag to both Doug and Roeland. No signs of activity were present whatsoever, no foot traffic, trails or any vehicle tracks.

“This doesn’t look right. None of it looks right,” Roeland said. “Mike and Jerrald should be out here,” referring to fellow Weerstand members. “Let’s double time it.”

Another half-hour, and they approached the first Segher checkpoint.

It was also unmanned.

“That, is not what I wanted to see,” Roeland said. Within a few minutes, they’d leapfrogged across half of the field in front of the main house. A blast of snow popped up to their right, just as the report of the rifle sounded in their ears. They both raised their rifles above their heads, and stood still.

“What in the Hell happened?” Doug asked.

“I have no idea. There were never any plans to abandon the observation posts,” Roeland answered.

The familiar form of Jake appeared in front of them, recognizing them at a hundred yards. He quickly waved at them and beckoned them back to the house.

“C’mon, boys. Not safe out here!” Jake yelled. Doug and Roeland moved as quickly as they could, finally reaching the porch and being pulled inside. Julie stood with a shotgun in the darkened house.

“You two are late for dinner,” Maria said. Julie rapidly stowed an old over-and-under shotgun and threw herself at Doug.

“We will endeavor to never do that again, Mother,” Roeland said, hugging her as he peeled off his parka.

“Don’t you ever leave me again,” Julie said, sobbing and whispering in Doug’s ear. “Ever!”

As they warmed up and ate, Arie pulled himself from his sickbed and told Doug and Arie the reasons for the pullback—The S.A. aircraft were targeting individuals in the field, seemingly wiping out observation posts systemically, from west to east, larger cities to small. The Segher’s had abandoned their observation posts ahead of the aerial patrols, which flooded the skies above the family farms with small drones and an occasional gunship. Properties held by corporate farms were generally uninhabited, and therefore didn’t merit the attention of the old-fashioned, diverse farms like the Segher’s.

They learned the details of the compromise of the Weerstand cell far to the west, resulting in the capture of another U.S. expeditionary unit. From that point in Guthrie County, west of Des Moines, the attacks had spread along with brutal S.A. rule in most of the smaller towns like Fairfield, the larger cities of Des Moines, Iowa City, Davenport and Cedar Rapids had been hit. Mercenaries—unaffected by RNEW—seemed to be in charge of lightning-fast search and destroy missions. Rumors had the mercenaries gaining experience from service in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a dozen other locations around the world where the U.S. had decided to become involved in affairs that probably didn’t concern them.

Within the timeframe of two days, the face of Iowa had changed forever.

The United States Army headquarters was a motley collection of tents, shelters and shipping containers, located on a railroad siding in Fort Madison on the Mississippi. Doug had been hoisted up to a sitting position once they arrived in the rail yard, allowing him to look around a little bit and see the ‘Fort Madison’ rail yard sign. The U.S. position was only about ten miles from his last assigned guard location at Keokuk. Despite his best efforts, he was still being moved away from the Farm.

Doug was off-loaded roughly, the zip tie on his ankles cut, and escorted at gunpoint into a chain link fenced enclosure, more of a cattle chute leading to a windowless shipping container. Before he entered, he noted the odd flag, not what he was used to, flying on an improvised flagpole a few cars down the track.

“Can you read?” Doug was asked as the door closed behind him.

“Of course,” he replied, as the men behind him cut off the zip ties on his hands.

“Follow those instructions,” a camouflage-clad soldier ordered, pointing to the corrugated metal wall.

The instructions ordered him to strip, shower in the open stall, and dry himself for a physical inspection. He followed the orders, languishing in the warm water and soap, neither of which he’d had in a couple weeks under his S.A. captors. His feet felt like they were on fire with the heat of the shower.

“Hurry it up, you worthless piece of shit!” one of the guards ordered.

“All right,” Doug said, shutting off the water, and taking a worn, once-white towel to dry himself.

“Put on these utilities and get through that door,” he was ordered. He complied without question, and was followed into the interrogation room by two large armed soldiers.

Behind the second door was a plain white room, a little more than half the width of the shipping container, with a desk and two chairs, one of which he sat in, still in a daze. A door opposite the one he entered immediately opened and a young Army captain entered, carrying a thin legal pad. Doug stood as he entered. The captain stopped for a moment and looked at him with skepticism and a furrowed brow.

I’m Captain McGowan, United States Army. What is your name and rank?”

“Douglas Michael Peterson. As for rank, I don’t have one. I was shanghaied from our farm south of Fairfield on December Twenty-second.”

“So you served with the S.A.”, McGowan said flatly.

“I was forced to serve,” Doug replied, before giving the captain the street address of the Segher Farm.

“And yet, you appear to be able to string words together in a coherent manner. Line grunts of the S.A. can’t do that. Which makes you an officer,” the captain countered. “Again, what is your rank?!”

“The S.A. control their troops and probably the general population through the use of altered food products that react with other altered food products. When the right combination of products are supplied, it affects the mind of the consumer. The effects build until you have an order-taking, soulless drone that will do whatever they’re told to do. It may physically change the brain, I don’t know. I know which of these foods will react with others. I avoided those that were catalysts for the reaction to occur,” Doug explained, before adding that he was covertly inserted by Regent into the Food and Drug Administration, under President Lambert, to assist in the distribution of the altered food into the supply chain for the U.S. military and general population.

“Quite the story,” McGowan said, reviewing his notes.

“Not a story. Fact. Before the war I worked for the company that created the product. The product is called RNEW, which was an acronym for Regent Nutritional Enhancement Workgroup, the department I was in. The parent company is…or was, Regent Performance Group. I’m pretty sure they were affiliated with both that New Republic outfit, the S.A., and President Lambert. I’d heard some of them are with the S.A. government now, but again, I’m not sure of that.”

The captains’ eyes narrowed as he considered the words of the prisoner.

“I supplied the information to our underground network and to U.S. troops from our farm, when they were trying to get back from behind the lines. The underground network is called the Weerstand. That word means ‘resistance’ in Dutch. One of the men on the farm also had the ability to locate and identify S.A. weapons and supplies through embedded RFID-like chips in their equipment. ”

“Through what technology?” McGowan asked, still obviously highly skeptical.

“A hand held reader camouflaged as an old Palm PDA. Someone ought to have record of it.”

“You said you met with U.S. troops?”

“Yes. Early December. We met them on December third. Sergeant by the name of Case. He was a Ranger out of Washington State. We got them across the border into Missouri the day after the S.A. fired their nukes toward Texas.”

“You two keep an eye on this one,” the Captain said to the two guards as he stood. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Doug sat for he guessed a half-hour; the men behind him unmoving in their observation of him. The door opened, and McGowan and another officer entered, this one a bird-colonel. Doug stood as they entered.

“This man claims to be a Douglas Peterson, Colonel. Associated with some underground group called the Weerstand,” Captain McGowan explained.

“And yet you were caught in full S.A. regalia, near a hardened S.A. encampment, less than two miles from the a large part of the S.A. First Defense Force,” the Colonel stated.

“What?” Doug asked.

“You were captured south of Montrose, Iowa. North of the S.A. forward air-support base, formerly Keokuk municipal airport. You, along with several hundred other S.A. prisoners captured within a ten mile radius, appear to be deserters from the former First Defense Force.”

“I didn’t know anything about an army near us. We were only at that airport for a couple of days,” Doug said. We were to guard the airport,” he said, omitting the orders to destroy all buildings between the rail line and the airport. “And what do you mean, ‘former?’”

“They were destroyed early this morning. We have a handful of survivors from that immediate area, including their commanding general,” McGowan stated, “Along with a number of their officers. And you.”

“So, you can understand our, ‘curiosity’ at your story,” the Colonel said skeptically, setting a thick folder down on the table, but keeping the contents hidden. Doug noted his name on the worn uniform, ‘Drummond.’

“I explained to Captain McGowan, Colonel, who I am and where I’m from. There should be some way to verify that with your own people. Check my I.D. file with the Federal information system. Take me back to the farm that I live on. The data that I told the Captain about is there. It’s fifteen or twenty miles from here,” Doug said.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘Federal system’ any longer. The S.A. saw to that when they pulled out of Denver. As for ‘taking you home’, we don’t exactly run a shuttle service,” Drummond spat at him. “Right now, I’m rounding up transport for your commanding general and some of his surviving senior officers to be shipped to San Antonio. I’m inclined to put you on the same transport.”

“I have no idea of any S.A. generals or any other officers. The S.A. we were with was run by men that called themselves ‘Sergeants’,” Doug said. “From December until two days ago, I was in New London. I never even fired my rifle except in training.”

“Ship him with Slocum,” Colonel Drummond said, moving to the doorway.

“Slocum?” Doug asked, stunned. ‘It couldn’t possibly be,’ he thought. He felt himself involuntarily push back from the table. “A.A. Slocum is their General? Good God,” he said, eyes wide at the revelation.

“Oh, so you do know him then,” McGowan replied.

“He was on the board of directors at Regent….my former employer. Chrome-plated asshole,” Doug said, still staring off into nothing. “He’s really a General?”

“General Slocum has been in command of an army that is responsible for the deaths of well more than a hundred thousand Americans. Possibly twice that, we don’t know. The men under his command have done unspeakable acts of savagery,” the Colonel said, opening the file and sliding it toward Doug’s side of the table, spreading several photographs apart for full clarity.

Doug looked at the first photograph and immediately vomited bile from his empty stomach on the wall next to him uncontrollably, and pushed away from the table.

“Those were six year olds attending school in Van Meter, Iowa. The S.A. raped them,” the Colonel said, spinning one photograph toward Doug, “Before beheading them. This one’s from Nebraska. School kids and their teachers who were trying to shelter them were locked in a room and then grenades were thrown in,” he said as another picture was tossed at him. “Here’s one where they used pregnant women for target practice. This one has a whole church full of people burned alive. This isn’t propaganda. Our unit saw all of this first-hand.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with any of that!” Doug screamed.

“You were captured in an S.A. uniform within running distance of where the S.A. was thrashed this morning. You’ve admitted serving with them…”

“I was captured and forced to serve!” Doug said.

“Yeah, I bet they worked you over real hard, too,” Drummond said. “Captain, get him into a detent cell like the others,” he ordered. “You, ‘Peterson’ or whatever your real name is, will probably take a drop from a short rope one of these days.”

Wednesday, January Seventeenth

06:00 hours

Third Washington Command Center

Fort Madison, Iowa

“Peterson!” Doug heard through the steel door. “You’ve got two minutes,” the guard said.

‘Two minutes until what,’ he wondered. He’d spent two days in solitary confinement, a five gallon bucket serving as his toilet, white steel walls and a single, lighted ceiling panel above him, never darkened. His meals were delivered through a slot in the bottom of the door, water provided via a spigot on the wall, that only dispensed a gallon of water per day. He rose from the thin cot, and pulled on thin, industrial-felt slippers, and waited.

Nothing in the room could be torn into anything that could be used as a noose; no belts, straps or metal of any kind. Had he tried to harm himself, the eye behind the black camera dome above him would’ve likely resulted in an immediate visit from one of the uniformed mountains known as guards. He’d had nothing but time to consider his circumstance, trying to make sense of the rushed battle around Keokuk before the S.A. troops bolted before artillery shells walked across the entire runway; of the fragments of the conversations he’d heard from the U.S. troops. There wasn’t enough that he’d heard to make sense of it all.

He heard the lock bars slide, and the door opened. “Get this gear on. Now,” the guard ordered, tossing in a pile of clothing, including a parka and boots. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

“No sir,” Doug replied as the door closed. He stripped off the orange coverall and underwear and changed into new clothing, tying boots that fit him perfectly as the door opened again.

“With us,” the guard ordered. “Get that parka on.” He knew better than to ask questions.

The temperature outside was well below zero, a bitter wind kicking up the snow again to just above ground level, a freezing fog under the January sun. Doug was escorted by the two guards across an open compound, into a rail car that obviously served as the base of operations for the camp.

“Inside, to the left. Fuck up, and we kill you. Got it?” one of the guards said.

“Got it,” Doug replied.

Two more guards met him inside the converted shipping container serving as a mobile office of some sort. The guards directed him to a small conference room, where his obvious choice was to sit and wait…for something. He didn’t have to wait long. His original interrogator, Captain McGowan, entered the room. Doug stood.

“Sit, Mister Peterson,” McGowan said, less of an order and more of a suggestion.

“Thanks,” he replied.

“One of the hats I wear in this command is logistics. The other is intelligence. We have found some interesting information about you in files recovered from the field.”

“Recovered?” Doug asked.

“The S.A. command center for the First Defense Force. It’s remains are not far from here.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“You remember your interrogation?” McGowan asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Third Washington—this Brigade—defeated First Defense early Sunday morning. As the Colonel said, several of their leadership were captured alive. We obtained unlock codes on their surviving data files and found some interesting information about you after a bit of digging.”

“What kind of information?” Doug asked.

“It appears to corroborate statements you made about not being in the S.A. You are allegedly in North Dakota at this time and an ‘enemy combatant’ as labeled by none other than General Slocum. Your file is rather remarkable.”

“I left Denver back in September. Regent wanted me to go to Columbus, I assume to mine me for information about the FDA and Federal operations. They were tracking me through surveillance cameras along the way. One of their inside men felt he owed me a favor and created the North Dakota rabbit trail. I came back to Iowa instead to be with my wife and family.”

“Do you know a woman named Camille Simpson?” McGowan asked. Doug’s jaw dropped.

“Yes, I…used to,” he replied, explaining his brief, highly physical relationship with his former girlfriend. McGowan took notes, pencil on legal pad. “Now, why do you ask about her? I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”

McGowan didn’t answer for a moment. “Do you know where she is at this time?”

“I have no idea. She went off her meds, which I didn’t even know she was on, and the last time I saw her was in Chicago.”

“It appears that she may have been a recipient of your mind-altering cocktail, courtesy of your former employer. Further, she is now, or was until Sunday morning, sleeping with General Slocum. She likely died in the attack.” McGowan said flatly. “I’m betting you had no idea about any of this.”

“I have nothing to say. I…” Doug paused. “How could this be?”

“Slocum states that they met through some athletic club. Does the ‘Lakeshore Club’ ring any bells?”

“Cammie worked there. So did my wife,” Doug said numbly. “I’m sorry. This is all too much.”

“Coffee?” McGowan asked.

“Please,” Doug answered, still stunned. “You have coffee?”

“Yeah,” McGowan answered, motioning to one of the guards, who opened a door and a carafe and mugs were handed in. “Miss Simpson is a relatively minor wrinkle in the larger scheme of things, but I thought you ought to know,” McGowan said, pouring two cups of coffee.

“So you’ve got Slocum alive?” Doug said as the door opened.

“For now,” Colonel Drummond answered. “He’ll have a date with eternity soon enough.” Doug stood. Although he didn’t know the man, Doug thought he looked tired and drawn; his close cropped, mostly grey hair barely covering a long scar across his scalp.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Doug said. His voice sounded foreign as he heard himself speak.

“Mister Peterson,” Drummond replied, pouring his own cup of coffee. “Several of my staff have been reviewing S.A. files most of the night to check into your story. Oddly enough, you appear to be telling the truth.”

“It’s easier to remember,” Doug said, taking a sip of the black coffee, and closing his eyes. “I’m just trying to get home.”

“In our first meeting, you mentioned some files that you said you’d passed on to an Army unit in your area,” Drummond asked.

“Yes. A Sergeant. His name was Gunner Case…from,” Doug struggled to remember, “Fort Lewis I think. We gave him the information on RNEW, and data on S.A. equipment that we’d collected…I’d collected. From Iowa to Denver and back.”

“Sergeant Case was killed in action along with his squad,” Drummond replied.

“We…we got them into Missouri. They were safe,” Doug said, leaning forward on the table. Another blow to his psyche.

“Their Blackhawk was taken out by a Russian-made drone south of Union Ridge, Missouri, probably not long after they made their rendezvous. The information you had supplied never made it out of their hands,” Drummond said. “We are pretty interested in what you can tell us, Mister Peterson.”

“They were just kids in that squad,” Doug said with a thousand-yard-stare. “Case’s men. Half of them played video games while they stayed with us. Barely out of school.”

Drummond and McGowan noticed it and didn’t press on for a moment. “Mister Peterson, was the S.A. unit you were with involved in any action?”

“Looted some buildings, burned some others but that was just down by the airport. No one on my shift ever fired a weapon in anger that I know of, certainly not in New London. Other than training…we fired one mag a week, maybe fifty yards range. AK-47’s. No handgun training. Other than a few people in New London, we never even saw anyone other than S.A.”

“So, what can you tell us about this stuff they’re eating?” McGowan asked. Drummond sat on the edge of the table with his arms folded.

“The marketing stated that the RNEW product could be used as an extender, and an enhancement to flavoring, along with adding nutritional value to raw materials that might have had less than sufficient flavor or nutrition. In reality, the products are catalytic. All of the Regent products—with the exception of what they called ‘Preferred’ products, were adulterated. The ‘Preferred’ stuff was available to the execs and people that they wanted to use in leadership positions. I was one of them. Lucky, I guess.”

“You said ‘catalytic,’” Drummond stated. “Explain, please.”

“Components of the food line when combined with the enhanced water or vitamin drink line react. If you have food or drink alone, it won’t react….at least, that’s what was being produced last Fall. You couldn’t combine them at that point without negating the reaction after a few hours. There was no way to preserve a combined product,” Doug explained. “I worked in the Des Moines plant. Ran it, actually.”

“How widespread is this stuff?” McGowan asked. Drummond was drilling into him with unblinking eyes.

“Last year it had been distributed most heavily east of the Mississippi, but really they were trying for every major population center. Their breakout though came in relief supplies and MRE’s. My job with Regent was to do what was necessary to get RNEW products into the military supply chain. Covertly I did the opposite. I provided the formula and the confidential marketing strategy to the U.S. via the Weerstand early last fall. September maybe,” Doug said, trying to remember. “Obviously it didn’t get through.”

“You worked for the FDA as well?” Drummond asked.

“Yeah. A Regent plant to influence the Cabinet level if I could or at least direct things Regent’s way at the agency level. FDA was located inside Regent’s Denver building. Regent knew everything that the FDA was doing. They had real time surveillance on everything and everyone of import, which didn’t really include me. In Denver I found it pretty easy to keep RNEW products in the east and keep the West Coast clean,” Doug said, taking a long drink of coffee.

“Does this information still exist? These formulas?”

“Sure. The Des Moines plant had the information of course, but I have no idea if that plant still exists. I had copies on the farm where my wife and I lived though,” Doug said, giving them the address, barely fifteen miles away.

“Get him some breakfast, Gerry. Regular rations. We’re going for a drive,” Drummond said, standing to leave. Doug rose as well, but couldn’t speak before the Colonel left the room.

“Am I to go along?” Doug asked quietly, thinking the unthinkable. ‘Home.’

“I would suspect so, Mister Peterson,” McGowan said. “I understand your wife and family may still be on that farm, but…I would not be optimistic. This Brigade has seen unspeakable destruction and loss of life and the swath that the S.A. cut through the country is huge. There are no guarantees of what might have become of your people.”

“I understand,” Doug said, heartsick but mind still racing ahead. ‘Could she still be there? Is she O.K.?’

Wednesday, January Seventeenth

9:30 hours

Doug was in the left rear seat of a Humvee, the Colonel in the front, being driven by a young Lieutenant. Captain McGowan was in the back with Doug, reviewing a thick sheaf of papers. Drummond and McGowan wore radio headsets; Kittrick did not.

Heading south from the railyard command center, the driver headed through a checkpoint, and Doug found himself in the midst of a blackened wrecking yard of military equipment. Dozens of Army soldiers were working.

“What happened here?” Doug asked. He realized this wasn’t the brightest of questions he could have asked. The answer was obvious a moment later. Frozen bodies lined the road—many were in pieces. “Oh my God.”

“This was the last command of General Slocum. The remains of the State of America First Defense Force,” Drummond replied. “Our men are clearing the field of munitions in addition to retrieving human remains for burial. There are more than eighty thousand dead here, Mister Peterson. We killed them.”

A scarred Caterpillar bulldozer carved a trench, cutting through the mud and a layer of frozen earth, obviously excavating a mass grave.

“There are three hundred main battle tanks out here, hundreds of trucks, artillery, and one hundred and five semi-trucks that were loaded with supplies, ammunition, and spoils of war. We’d like you to take a look at some of the food products,” McGowan said.

“Uh, sure.”

“Next left, Mister Kittrick,” Drummond ordered. They turned into a frozen, rutted road, where a semi-trailer had apparently be cut in half, lengthwise. The Humvee stopped and they made their way to the wreck. Regent-made MRE’s littered the ground.

“These are all Regent,” Doug said. “Here’s their marking,” Doug pointed out to the officers. “You shouldn’t use any of this. I don’t know what inside of these might be safe.” It was only at that moment that Doug looked up and saw the field of dead S.A., spreading a thousand feet before him. A frozen arm reached toward the weak January sun, just feet away from him. “This is…so much to take in,” Doug said.

“Yes, it is.” Drummond said. “None of us will be the same.”

“Everyone takes a shift in the field, Mister Peterson. Officers included,” McGowan said. “We’ll be out of body bags by noon today.”

The drive to the farm was like a trip back in time for Doug, familiar landmarks rising to his vision, and his heart beat faster as he recognized roadside trees, bends in the road, and the driveway ultimately came into view.

His heart sank as the remains of the main house came into sight—the driveway obstacles had been shoved out of the way, the high berms had holes plowed through them.

“NO!” Doug cried out.

The home was burned to the foundation and had collapsed on itself. A Third Washington patrol unit had arrived ahead of them and had fanned out and secured the area.

Drummond, McGowan and Lieutenant Kittrick were quiet as they pulled up to the remains of the huge equipment shed. Huge pieces of the sheetmetal skin were blown thirty feet away from the building, the remaining steel frame was twisted and burned. Doug could see the remains of Arie’s truck in the wreckage.

“Report,” Drummond asked a sergeant in command of the advance unit.

“No signs of activity sir, friendly or otherwise.”

“Did you check the other houses? The cellar? The barn?” Doug said through tears. He was beginning to hyperventilate.

“Our men are at this time, sir,” the sergeant replied. Drummond didn’t look optimistic.

“Mister Peterson, where might you have hidden those files?” McGowan asked, ignoring Doug’s missing family.

“There was a copy in the equipment shed. And in my own place. It’s over near the treeline,” he said, pointing toward the location of his and Julie’s home.

“Baker, get a couple of men over that way,” the sergeant said to his men.

“Where would your family have hidden from the S.A., Mister Peterson?” Drummond asked quietly.

“There are hidden cellars in a couple of the homes, and one of the old root cellars, up that draw, about two hundred yards that way,” Doug said, pointing to a map of the area, showing the soldiers the locations Peter and Molly’s home and three other Segher houses.

“All right, let’s go have a look up that draw,” Drummond said, taking an old scoped bolt-action rifle with him. “Gerry, with us.”

“Colonel, we’ve got company,” Lieutenant Kittrick said, pointing out a lone civilian, arms raised, currently being searched by one of Drummonds soldiers as another held him at gunpoint.

“Recognize him, Mister Peterson?” Drummond asked.

“What?” Doug said, still trying to process what he was seeing all around him. “Uh, no. I don’t think so,” he said, finally clearing his vision enough to see the man. The man was bundled up in an old wool greatcoat, a clerical collar barely visible; a heavy fur cap pulled low over his ears.

“Clear, sir,” the soldier who had searched the man said.

“Advance,” Drummond said. “Identify yourself, please.”

“Pastor Roger Macklin. I’m from Ottumwa.”

“What are you doing here?” McGowan asked.

“I’m trying to help the survivors. Provide comfort if possible. I heard there was a need over near Fort Madison.”

“You could say that,” Drummond said. “There are north of eighty thousand dead there, and three thousand to bury them.”

“I had heard of a battle,” the pastor replied. “I hope that I may help.”

“Right now, we’re looking for this man’s family. This was his farm. Do you know what happened here?”

“No. I don’t think there is anyone alive here though,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ve been across this area for a couple of days. I have a pickup truck and camper about a mile west of here.”

“Have you…seen any bodies?” Doug asked, heart pounding in his ears.

“Unfortunately yes. I found them early this morning. They are…up this way,” Pastor Macklin said, point up the draw where Doug had hoped the Seghers had found refuge.

Doug dropped to his knees, unable to go on. The pastor immediately took Doug’s hands and did his best to calm him down and pray with him. His mouth was open as if to scream, his eyes wide as in terror.

Drummond and McGowan were sympathetic, but there was little they could do. They proceeded up the shallow draw, and saw the low concrete roof of the old cellar, stained with smoke above where a door should’ve been. The twisted steel door lay fifteen feet away. It appeared to have been blown off from an explosion within the cellar.

“This looks familiar,” Colonel Drummond said. “Load up the room with civilians and grenade them. Inside, Kittrick?”

“Yes sir. There’s gotta be fifteen or twenty dead in there.”

“How long?”

“Can’t say, sir. I’d guess weeks. Obvious animal activity after they were killed.”

“Any women? Can you tell?” Drummond asked.

“Not enough left to tell, at least from what I can see, sir. It’s pretty bad inside.”

“Weapons?”

“Yes, sir. Looks like a couple of AK receivers and barrels. Some of the bodies have boots that look S.A., but that doesn’t really mean anything. This was more of a fire than explosion sir. I think the heat blew that door off. Flash fire or something.”

“We’re going to need a detail here to remove those bodies, Lieutenant. Once they’re out of there, Peterson should see them,” Drummond said, looking inside the cellar. “He doesn’t need to see the removal. I expect that his own house is ash, too. There’s nothing we’re going to retrieve obviously. The locusts have been through here, stripped it clean and killed everyone they came across. Again,” he said, dropping to a knee, seeing something in the snow a few feet outside the doorway. He picked through the snow cover, and retrieved a tiny, light blue knitted cap, sized for a newborn.

“Is it of more comfort to you to think that your family might yet be alive, or to confirm that they are dead?” Colonel Drummond asked no one in particular, brushing the snow from the tiny knitted cap.

“At this point I think the only comfort to be found would be the hope that his loss will lessen with a great distance of time,” McGowan replied.

“A great distance indeed,” Drummond said, folding the tiny cap and laying it in the snow where he’d found it. “Peterson might recover from this, although God alone knows how. What I’m looking at here will destroy what’s left of him. Central Command wants him on his way to San Antonio on the next outbound.”

“After that?” McGowan said, omitting the more formal ‘sir’.

“‘Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.’ I think Robert Louis Stevenson said that,” Drummond said as several soldiers appeared, donning thick rubber gloves before they entered the burned out cellar. “If everything he said is on the up and up, he had ample chances to get out of harms’ way, and didn’t. Playing along with the S.A. probably got everyone he cared about killed, and you could make the case that he materially assisted in the S.A. plan to conquer the entire continent.”

“You think San Antonio sees it that way?” McGowan asked.

“I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise. They want him for what he knows about this RNEW product, but the chances of him ever seeing daylight as a free man are I’d suspect, damned near non-existent. Once the politicians get wind of him it’s blood in the water and the water’s full of sharks.”

“He’s not that bastard Slocum,” the captain replied.

“No, he’s not. Slocum and his surviving minions will pay with their lives, after the interrogators are done with them and some short, sweet war-crimes trials. Peterson’s coin is on the edge. Heads, he’s an S.A. collaborator and could swing from his neck for it. Tails, he’s a tragic hero who found himself in the middle of something bad and tried to do something about it and paid for it with everything. Which way it goes will be driven by what is politically advantageous, not what’s factual, and certainly not what might be called ‘true’.”

“I suspect that the S.A. leadership would consider Third Washington a bunch of butchers,” McGowan stated.

“There is no doubt of that,” Drummond replied. “Probably a healthy bounty on all of us.”

“Colonel, Command is trying to get in touch with you, sir. Is your headset working?” Kittrick asked, holding a hand-held radio.

“Seems my gear works while I’m actually in camp, and not anywhere else, Mister Kittrick. What’s the word?”

“We’re being ordered to stand down, sir. Graves Registration and Munitions Disposal units will be on site by twelve hundred hours, and we’re to be reassigned.”

“Gerry, perhaps our own banquet of consequences awaits us,” Drummond said. “Let’s give Mister Peterson our condolences, and see if Command wants to put us on trial.”

Coming up...

2014-07-02T08:11:00.002-07:00

Chapter 60 will be uploaded by Friday, July 4th. It's taken me awhile to find enough time to finish it up, but I think it'll be worth it....keep your eyes peeled. This will conclude 'Distance'...but not the story.

Thanks, everyone--

Tom

Distance, Chapter 59

2014-04-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

Sunday, December Third

3:20 p.m.

Hamilton, Illinois

The backed up single-file traffic on Second Street, which led to the bridge over the Mississippi probably meant that the S.A. was searching vehicles or at least had some sort of checkpoint in place.

Doug was behind the wheel for the return trip, Peter in the passenger seat, and their wives in the back rows of the Suburban with Sergeant Case and two of his men joining him in the remaining seats—dressed in civilian clothing, but ready with their weapons if needed. The rest of the U.S. recon unit had positioned themselves in the twenty-four foot trailer, making the hasty trip west before the S.A. could react…or so they thought. Case communicated with the rest of his men via a small, short-range headset radio.

“Can’t see anything ahead, Sergeant. Too many trees until we’re nearly to the bridge approach,” Peter told Case. “Snow’s not helping things, either.”

“Smoke up ahead. Look over to the side there,” Doug said, pointing over the grey trees.

The row of vehicles moved slowly, no more than a few miles per hour, creeping ahead to the southwest. As they crept ahead, they stopped briefly on railroad tracks, which also passed over the Mississippi. Case was the first to notice the source of the smoke.

“Look to your right—down track. There’s your smoke,” he said.

Doug looked left briefly, seeing the glow of numerous rail cars burning and derailed, as the traffic urged him on. No emergency lights or response crews were visible.

“You think they derailed, or is the bridge gone?” Peter asked.

“Traffic wouldn’t be moving if our bridge was out, but no telling on the rail bridge…for a couple more minutes anyway,” Doug replied.

They gradually made their way to the bridge approach, seeing another reason for the traffic slowdown: A tractor-trailer had wrecked, partly rolling over on side, crushing the bed of a pickup. Again, no emergency vehicles had responded, but several other vehicles had stopped to help.

“What happened to that truck? The road is straight here,” Molly asked innocently.

“Look at the trailers. Look at those holes!” Peter said as they drew closer. The cargo trailers were peppered with large-diameter holes…running the length of both trailers and exiting out the exposed side, now facing the sky. Case didn’t say anything as they passed the truck. A wall of windblown smoke from the derailed train blocked the view ahead. Peter wisely shut off the heater and defroster, so as not to bring the smoke inside the Suburban.

“You might want to let the cars ahead clear, and get through that smoke quickly,” Case said. “We don’t know what’s in it.”

Doug realized the smoke could be toxic, with unknown chemicals from the burning rail cars.

“Gotcha,” he replied, double-checking the air vents on the dash. The traffic ahead continued to move slowly, disappearing through the smoke. Doug waited a few more seconds, and goosed the accelerator, causing the four-wheel drive to break loose on the icy bridge approach. They passed through the wall of smoke without incident, seeing the carnage to the right as they cleared the oily smoke on the other side of the bridge.

“Good God,” Peter said, the first to speak. The derailed train hung from the wreckage of the rail bridge. Large sections of the bridge were missing, and those that remained were heavily damaged by the accordion reaction of the rail cars as they piled up.

“Air Force was busy today, looks as if,” Gunner Case replied.

“We bombed our own bridge?” Molly asked incredulously.

“No, the United States Air Force bombed a railroad bridge being used by the enemy to transport goods, troops and materiel to the front,” Case answered. “And about damned time.”

As they rubbernecked the scene, Doug nearly didn’t notice the cluster of S.A. troops at the far end of the bridge, who were also gawking at the wreckage. Several were leaning on the bridge rails, AK-47’s slung over their back and hanging behind them. The Suburban and trailer passed unchallenged and unnoticed.

“OK, I can breathe now,” Doug said, flipping on the defroster as the S.A. trucks and men disappeared behind them.

Downtown Keokuk was gloomy with no electric lights showing, snow drifted over the curbs and filling doorways of the closed shops. Traffic thinned out as the bridge traffic dispersed. Doug and Peter debated taking the side roads rather than the highways, and the chances of ‘issues’ with the trailer in the snow. They elected to take U.S. Sixty One north at first, and work west, staying on some of the larger County roads. With luck, they’d be back at the Farm in another hour.

One hour pushed into two, as the roads grew increasingly icy and the wind picked up, the Suburban and trailer both sliding dangerously. Finally, nearing six p.m., they pulled into the main entry to the Farm. By then, Case had been filled in on the operations of the Farm, security, and patterns of S.A. movements locally. Roeland met them at the gate, naturally surprised by the towed trailer.

“What’s going on?” he asked through the drivers’ window.

“We have some guests. United States Army,” Peter replied. Roeland stepped back in shock.

“And welcome they are. Drive all the way into the equipment shed, trailer and all. I’ll signal ahead.”

“Will do,” Doug replied.

He drove ahead through the heavy snow, steering into the cavernous and dark equipment shed, where Maria met him and guided him all the way into the building. The huge sliding door closed behind them, and the lights snicked on as they exited the Chevy.

“Maria, we have some guests,” Peter said, introducing Sergeant Case. The remaining men piled out of the travel trailer, fanning out to cover the room.

“We will need more seats for dinner,” she replied dryly. “Welcome to you all,” she said, nodding her head slightly. “You ladies head into the house. You both look green.”

“Lunch isn’t sitting well,” Molly replied.

“That, and a touch of car-sickness,” Julie said. “And my back hurts.”

“Ian managed to sleep all the way back, so I’m sure that means I’ll be up most of the night,” Molly said, taking Ian, car seat and all, from the Chevy.

“Go have some tea. Dinner is ready and on the stove,” Maria said. “Quietly, though. Arie is sick.”

“Is it serious?” Peter asked.

“It is a cold at the moment. I pray it does not get worse. He is an uncooperative patient, as he has always been.”

“Maria, we need to meet with the Weerstand. I’m sure you understand why,” Doug said.

“It has been an eventful day. I will have Roeland contact Jakob. Peter, I will need some help in the kitchen. Do you mind? Douglas, see to the comforts of our guests. It may be best to keep them in the shed for the time being,” Maria said. “There have been a number of small aircraft passing over today. Jakob doesn’t know if they are watching us.”

“Drones, Ma’am?” Case asked, and introduced himself.

“Jakob believes so. Several jet aircraft as well, again. Jakob did not recognize them, however.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Case replied, turning to his men and speaking to them in a conversation to quiet to hear. Several went into action immediately, retrieving equipment, and began to set up the gear. Maria and Peter headed to the house.

“Sergeant, you might not get much of a signal in here. It’s been set up as a pretty large Faraday cage,” Doug stated.

“Our gear should be able to receive signals in here, sir,” one of the men replied quite confidently.

“Good luck,” Doug said. “The guy who designed it used to work for the NSA. I’m pretty sure that his defense is better than your offense,” he said, looking at the soldier setting up a laptop, connected to a non-descript flat box with a flip up antenna. Doug waited for the expected outcome, and was not disappointed.

“Sarge, uh, we’ve got nothing. Not minimal, nothing,” the soldier stated.

“We used this room to analyze S.A. bugs planted in my old Jeep, as well as in captured S.A. equipment. We couldn’t really do that if there was a snowball’s chance in Hell of a signal getting out,” Doug said. “Also, if that’s a passive receiver, you’re probably OK to use it. If it’s a transmitter, it puts the Farm at risk.”

“It’s not a transmitter like anything out in the wild, sir,” the soldier said. “There are six of these in the world. No way the S.A. could crack it.”

“Where were the components made?” Doug asked calmly.

“What?” Case and the soldier answered.

“Jake found signals emanating from what appeared to be an average circuit board. A circuit board. Nothing even soldered to it…just a printed circuit. It was light and heat activated. Where was it made? China,” Doug said, pausing. “So are you sure that you know that thing isn’t a great big flare in the dark?”

Both looked at Doug for a moment, and then at the box and the laptop.

“Maybe let Jake crack that open and take a look before you fire it up out in the field,” Doug said. “Meanwhile, there’s a restroom and shower through that door, and the door to the bunkhouse is over to the right. Probably need to leave the door open to get some heat in there, though. No hot water without heating up the woodstove over there,” he said, pointing to a modern woodstove and boiler.

“Sarge, we’re ready for patrol. Tired of sitting around,” one of the men said from across the shop.

“Rothe, shut the Hell up,” Case barked. “They’ve been running LP/OP’s longer than you’ve been out of Basic,” he said, referring to the numerous observation posts on the Farm and throughout the extended area. “And that grandmother can probably outshoot your sorry ass.”

Doug held back a smile, knowing that in her younger days, Maria’s hobby had been a local version of biathlon, but used thirty-ought sixes at a minimum distance of five hundred yards, rather than twenty-two caliber rifles at a hundred-sixty.

Several of Case’s men checked out the bunkhouse, laughing that they’d be sleeping in ‘Air Force quarters’ as the beds were so nice.

The men enjoyed and praised the Segher’s hospitality as Maria and Peter had served numerous quarts of hot, home-canned beef stew, and the majority of the freshly baked bread for the week was consumed in a single meal. Molly took a quick nap as Julie baby-sat Ian.

The restless Army squad wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer regarding night watch and security rotation. Roeland and Jake briefed the men on the locations of the observation posts, signals procedures, expected weather, and recent events on other allied farms. Several of the men had to be taught on how to use the ancient, hard-wired Army-issue field telephones, unused by the military for decades, but perfectly serviceable for the task at hand on the Farm. Four of the men would take the eight p.m. to midnight shift; the other the midnight to six shift. Roeland explained that the S.A. activity after two a.m. usually dropped off to undetectable levels—on more than one occasion, the Weerstand had found S.A. asleep on their assigned patrol locations…and occasionally killed them for their inattention. The farms usually ratcheted down guard duties during that time as well, getting ready for the coming work day, as much as that might be possible. The pattern was well established, and there was no reason to think that the S.A. would change, especially in ‘farm country.’

Jake carefully cracked open both the laptop and the mysterious black box carried by the communications specialist in Case’s squad, under watchful eyes of numerous soldiers.

As suspected, the raw circuit boards were indeed sourced from China, but Jake could not find any evidence of surreptitious tracking or transmitting ability. He reassembled both units, clearing Specialist Chris Evans to contact U.S. Army command. Despite numerous attempts to make contact, Evans was unsuccessful in raising anyone in other patrols or anyone on the designated satellite frequencies, all the way up the food chain to San Antonio.

Case’s squad members were armed with suppressed M4 rifles, in addition to their standard-issue side arms. Roeland opened up two cases of ammunition for the squad to reload their depleted inventories and each of the men took a few magazines, ‘just because’. The night however, passed uneventfully with another five inches of snow falling overnight. Snow had benefits as well as liabilities: Tracks in the snow easily showed out-of-place foot traffic (this night, there was none); and any surviving game in the area could be tracked for harvest. The liabilities were obvious—no party in force could camouflage their passage on foot without leaving an obvious trail, a fact not lost on the U.S. Army.

Monday, December Fourth

4:00 a.m.

The Segher Farm

Doug had managed five uninterrupted hours of sleep before Julie rose, the baby causing her discomfort. The remainder of her night was restless, but sleep was impossible for Doug at that point. He quietly dressed at four a.m., went into the kitchen, where he found Case already up, looking over a map of southern Iowa.

“Any idea on where you’re heading?”

“Not until we’re in touch with upstairs.”

“Still nothing on your radio?”

“Picked up some distant stuff from Nebraska…Grand Island. We’ve apparently got troops there moving east. Nothing though within our communications tree.”

“I’m sure you can stay here as long as you need,” Doug said, feeding the firebox in the woodstove for tea.

“We appreciate that, but we do have an extraction point established. We’re just a couple hundred miles behind schedule,” Case said.

“Can’t help much with that, unfortunately. Pretty tough to move at all right now beyond the farm and the local towns. I think were damned lucky yesterday, getting you out of Illinois.”

“Why risk it? You, your wife, family…”

“Had a chance. It worked. Probably….perhaps certainly, wouldn’t work today or tomorrow, depending on how the S.A. is pumping the war today,” Doug said. “We’ve done a few things over the past couple weeks that would’ve gotten us shot in a public square, had we been caught. Yesterday wasn’t much different.”

“Such as?” Case asked.

“The most interesting was probably taking down the surveillance cameras in three towns simultaneously. That was a challenge,” Doug said.

“What cameras?”

“Every Federal building, whether it’s post office, agriculture office, unemployment, HHS, whatever, along with every police station, fire station, hospital, county seat…they all have a nice surveillance camera hanging over the street right in front of the building…and cameras on the buildings and parking lots of course. The street cameras were the first target, later the others as opportunities came about. Took all the street cameras out at the same minute, in all three towns. Surprising how effective a little electricity can be at frying electronics.”

“How did you do it?” Case asked with a little smile.

“Farm trucks with portable welders,” Doug explained. “The poles they’d installed the cameras on all had a wire path that was in a specific location within the metal pole. Tagging that one spot for thirty seconds with a decent sized arc welder cooked the cameras and probably the computers they were feeding.”

“Didn’t the S.A. respond?”

“Tough for them to get out of the buildings that were hit. We had other teams that either blocked the doors with trucks and then left them there—the doors most of the time opened outward—or four guys carried three-quarter inch thick sheets of plywood and portable nail guns and just boarded up the doors,” Doug said. “It was really just a one time opportunity. After that, they had armed guards standing watch outside every building…until a couple weeks ago. Somehow or other, their guards keep getting shot in the head or chest. Single shots. Long range, no one heard the report. The S.A. apparently hasn’t been all that successful at collecting all the firearms out there,” he chuckled.

“So, what about the other cameras?”

“When electricity became less than reliable, Jake found the weak link in the facilities’ camera installation, too. The lenses are armored glass. The coax cables weren’t shielded as well. A few good quality air rifles, and most of them were out of commission. The air rifles are pretty handy for harassing S.A. loyalists wherever they are.”

“Dangerous,” Case said.

“Yeah, but when they force the locals into their service, there comes a point you have to stand up. We reached that point some weeks ago.”

“So what are you doing to, as you say, harass?”

“If the S.A. loyals come ‘shopping’, goods are found that are fitting for them, meaning, rotting. Service that they might need is delayed due to ‘lack of parts’ or ‘lack of knowledgeable service people’; the heat in their hotel rooms is generally inoperative—you do know that they use the hotels for barracks, right?” Doug asked without waiting for an answer. “The air rifles are put to use shooting holes in the windows of their rooms. There isn’t replacement glass, or tape to cover them. So, their rooms get cold. There isn’t plywood to cover them, so the rooms become abandoned. Without dependable electricity, the boilers running the heating systems fail. Pipes freeze. Hotels become uninhabitable.”

“Grinding them down,” Case stated.

“It’s one way. It won’t be the only way,” Doug said.

“What about this food issue? Is what you say on the up and up?”

“Yes,” Doug said unequivocally. “If your troops were to consume the combinations of food fed to the S.A. troops and their gangs, you’d find that you could order them to do absolutely anything, and they’d likely execute those orders without question, remorse or conscience. Think about that for a minute.”

Case’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated what Doug had said.

“My former employer had a contract to make MRE’s for the U.S. military. They did so with the RNEW formula slipped into it, and they distributed it heavily in the Northeast and some other urban areas when things started to come apart. They timed the distribution to coincide with the economic collapse…which I suspect that they helped facilitate. When I learned what the stuff was, I helped get word out on what the RNEW products were and could do, and during a stint in Denver, I worked for the Food and Drug Administration. I managed to derail numerous attempts to ship those MRE’s to the Western U.S., without my former employer catching on. I sent information to your superiors in Texas that would’ve resulted in me being shot in the head and dumped in a slit trench. With some help, I disappeared from the Federal Government and from my former employer. I suspect that if either knew I was here, and certainly if they knew of my current activities, I’d be dead. So would everyone on this farm.”

Case didn’t say anything, but considered Doug’s statement.

“Where are you from, Sergeant?”

“Little town. Ashton, Idaho. Population twelve-hundred and five.”

“Sorry, never heard of it,” Doug replied.

“Not many have…and that’s perfectly okay.”

“You’d take these risks too, if this were Ashton, Idaho,” Doug said. “How long have you served?”

“Seven years. Iraq, Afghanistan, several other places that were never official deployments and of course we never officially killed anyone,” Case replied as one of his men entered the kitchen.

“Sarge, got Command in San Antonio. Comms are routed through an AWACS south of here. Entire satellite network is fried, they say. Better hustle, not sure how long our uplink will last.”

“Good luck,” Doug said, filling the old teapot. “Give the United States our regards.”

Tom, where ya been?

2014-04-17T17:42:00.002-07:00

Well, it's not complicated.

Tied up in a building project (relocated our company) which has consumed a vast amount of time since January, aside from "real work" in my day job; seemingly endless project stuff at the house, a rebuild project at our church (arson fire); and the youngest is graduating from college in a couple of weeks.

That said, I will have the next-to-last chapter of Distance up by the end of the weekend.

Happy Easter, everyone. He is Risen Indeed.

Distance, Chapter 58

2014-02-23T11:56:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December Third

10:14 a.m.

Ferris, Illinois

Church services provided convenient opportunities to travel outside of the normal radius of work activity, especially during the Christmas season. The S.A., at least in rural Iowa and Illinois, didn’t hinder Sunday travel, especially a surge that happened to be around the time of regular services in the area. Doug and Julie, Peter, Molly and baby Ian took the opportunity to visit second cousins in Illinois as their cover, as well as delivering early Christmas presents and a few ‘replacement parts for farm machinery.’

Two days a week, one could expect to see some amount of traffic on the roads, even with scarce fuel: Sunday, for church services and perhaps a trip into ‘town’, and Wednesdays, which the S.A. nationally had designated a ‘Market Day’. They expected the nation to be able to complete all necessary shopping and business that involved private automobiles to be completed within a single day--with penalties likely given should one be caught on the road on any other day. The new decree, given just before Thanksgiving, didn’t affect most of the farmers, who had thinned out their reasons for visiting towns, but did radically affect those who shopped for entertainment, sport, or subsistence. Of course, the lack of fuel dropped most traffic from the roads more quickly than a decree. Transportation devolved from gasoline and diesel to bicycles and horseback within weeks.

This particular day, a bio-diesel fueled Suburban from the farm was cleaned and made presentable for the trip, in order to appear that it was a commuter vehicle and not a workhorse. The cargo area held wrapped ‘presents’, which if opened, would be sweaters, quilts, and other homemade crafts; and several rough boxes, containing what appeared to be useable parts for farm engines and a hydraulic pump and manifold.

S.A. checkpoints were non-existent on the route that Peter had chosen, which took County roads to the east toward the Mississippi, then south toward Keokuk, across the river, and then taking rarely used County roads into the little village of Ferris, which pre-War, had less than two hundred residents.

The trip of course had the primary purpose of exchanging intelligence with Resistance cells in Illinois. This particular corner of the state had little in the way of interest for typical State of America operations—mostly farming and dispersed agricultural businesses, and no major freeways, no military bases…but it was a good place for being ‘out of the way.’

They met Jack Classen and his mother Olga, Arie’s second cousin and the matriarch of the Weerstand in the region on the steps of the small church in the village. Typical Christmas carols played to the sparse congregation in the barely heated sanctuary as the pastor spoke from Luke of Jesus’ birth. No one was prepared for the two vreemden --outsiders-- standing just inside the door, looking at the congregants. The pastor’s invitation to sit was ignored, if not in hostility, in indifference. Doug held Julie’s hand during the sermon, as he contemplated a ‘play’, should the S.A. ‘ambassadors’ do something. His handgun rested in a holster under his left arm; he knew that Peter Forsythe had at least one handgun, including a small Kahr forty-five caliber concealed carry, on his ankle. Julie had a three-eighty semi automatic; Molly carried a twin to Julie’s. Ian slept soundly in his car seat, bundled up against the cold.

The handful of ceiling lights failed just as the pastor began the benediction. A church elder efficiently lit several ancient Coleman lanterns, hanging on hooks on the sides of the sanctuary. Doug thought this must be a regular occurrence, and the church just dealt with it. Within a few more minutes, they filed out of the building, into a light snow. Peter waited until they were far away from the S.A. troops before he spoke.

“Is the power as spotty here as it is on our side of the river?” Peter asked, holding little Ian in his blanket sleeper.

“Every few days. Cannot predict it,” Olga said. “It doesn’t really affect us much. Let us get to the farm and we will talk further, Ja?”

“Certainly,” Peter replied as Molly put Ian back in the car seat.

Doug noted how much Olga sounded like Arie—like a sister, not a cousin.

Six miles outside of town, Jack Classen turned off of the County road into a long farm road, his well-worn Suzuki Samurai easily handling the rutted, icy roads. The farmhouse was nothing like the Segher’s—this home was rancher-style, dating from the fifties or sixties, complete with a swimming pool in the front yard, now covered with ice and snow. An oversized metal clad pole barn stood to the southwest, with an old camp trailer parked nearby. Someone was inside the home, and opened the front door as they hurried inside. Doug helped Julie along the icy pathway.

“Thanks, Paul,” Jack said.

“It’s hitting the fan,” the younger man said quietly to his older brother. Doug thought that the younger Classen looked about twenty, with Jack a few years older.

“What is this?” their mother replied.

“The S.A., Mom,” he answered. “They’ve fired ballistic missiles at the U.S.”

“Nuclear?” Doug asked.

“Is there any other kind?” he replied. “I’m Paul, by the way.”

“Doug Peterson, and my wife Julie,” he said, shaking hands.

“Good to see you again, Paul,” Julie’s brother said, shaking his hand as well.

“How do you know this?” Olga pressed. “How to be certain?”

“Shortwave network. Spotter saw some sort of portable launcher setup, right in downtown Detroit. Two missiles went up from there. Big, not surface to air,” the young man said. “Another guy confirmed the vapor trail with three other locations, headed southwest. Not long after that, the radios died.”

“Died? The radios are on batteries,” Olga. “You mean they quit broadcasting?”

“No, I mean there was nothing to receive—anywhere, on any frequency. Even the nonsense chatter—that scrambled stuff—is gone.”

“Where did they go? The missiles, that is,” Doug asked.

“The power’s out for a reason, I think,” Jack replied. “I think they were electromagnetic weapons, and they nuked the grid.”

“Is there any way to know?” Peter asked.

“The gibberish signals and tones that we heard were from satellite broadcasts. If they used an EMP, the satellites would probably be dead,” Paul answered. “Our guests think so, too,” he said cryptically.

“Paul, did you try another radio? One that had been in the cage when the first one died?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. It powers up fine, so does that other little scanner. Tests OK with local broadcasts—picks up my own CB radio—, which was probably dangerous to do. But there’s nothing out there for it to pick up.”

No one spoke for a few seconds as they considered what might have happened.

“Would the S.A. really use a nuclear weapon on the U.S.?” Julie asked.

“I shouldn’t say this,” Doug answered, “But not much would surprise me when it comes to what they might do, especially if they are desperate. Or acting deliberately.”

“Are they desperate?” Olga asked. “We have news for you, before you answer that. Come with me to the basement and meet our guests. Paul, how is the fire?”

“It’s fine. Lunch is heating and should be ready soon.”

“Peter, Ian needs to be changed and to eat. Would you help out with lunch?” Molly asked.

“I’ll be right back,” Olga replied to Molly. “Peter needs to meet our friends.”

Jack took a small battery powered lantern and lit it for the trip to the basement, which already had some light emanating from the bottom of the stairs. Doug thought he heard someone downstairs.

“We have guests, my friends. Do not be alarmed,” Olga said to the basement. Doug heard a number of people move below him. Julie followed, holding his hand. He thought, ‘What the heck is going on?’

He wasn’t long to wait for an answer. As he followed Olga downstairs, he saw eight men stand.

“Ma’am,” a rather stocky man said, “May I ask who these folks is?”

“They are your contacts on my cousin’s farm in Iowa,” Olga replied. “Douglas here, worked for the S.A. in Denver. I think you will want to hear what he has to say.”

“Now, wait a sec,” Doug said. “I didn’t know they were the S.A. They were the Federal Government at that point. I worked for the Food and Drug Administration.”

“Yes, that is true. But you have been ‘inside,’ so to speak, Ja?”

“Fair enough,” Doug answered.

“Please be seated, everyone,” Olga directed, and the men sat rather uncomfortably in the large family room. “Sergeant, you might want to talk with Douglas about his work outside of the Federals, as well.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Classen. I’d appreciate any information that can be provided.” Doug could tell that the man probably didn’t trust the newcomers, and he couldn’t blame him one bit. They were hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, and while not dressed in military digital camouflage, their attire was certainly not entirely civilian.

“Very good. Now, I will go see to luncheon. Jack, perhaps you should keep a lookout from the barn? Julie, you sit now. Do not tire yourself,” Olga ordered. “Mister Case? Perhaps after lunch, one of your men should join Jack out in the barn?” One of the men moved a chair closer for Julie, Case nodded at him and the man headed upstairs, to join Jack on lookout without taking lunch. Julie took off her coat and covered her lap, watching the young men around her.

“Introductions are in order, I believe. I’m Sergeant Gunner Case, U.S. Army. We’re from the Second Battalion, Seventy Fifth Rangers, formerly of Fort Lewis, Washington.” Doug shook his hand.

“Doug Peterson. My wife Julie,” he said, before introducing Peter as well.

“I understand you’re a member of the Weerstand as well?”

“Adopted, not born into it,” Doug said, sitting at a well-worn mahogany poker table, where Peter had already taken a seat. “I hope this means that the U.S. is on the move?”

“Tides will turn, sir.”

“What can we help you with?” he asked.

“Anything you can tell us about the S.A. in the region would be appreciated.”

“Are you guys…on foot?” Peter asked.

“Mobility doesn’t always mean wheels, sir.”

For fifteen minutes, the men spoke about the S.A. presence in the smaller towns, tactics, patrol schedules, and the means and methods of S.A. control over the farm country. While Doug and Peter talked to Sergeant Case, the six other men listened intently, several leaning forward and using their M-16’s as one might lean on a cane. Doug noted that Julie had fallen asleep, head resting gently on the side pillow of her chair. As they were getting into the heart of things, Olga called them upstairs for lunch. Doug roused Julie, who was a bit embarrassed to have fallen asleep so quickly.

Olga had Paul say a blessing before lunch, in Dutch and English, for the crowd. After the ladies had been served, Peter and Doug were shooed into the line, followed by the Sergeant.

Lunch was a thick vegetable beef stew, served from an enormous stockpot. A huge basket of rounded sourdough loaves, butter, tea and milk was resting on the sideboard in the dining room. Olga gave the men permission to eat wherever they liked, which drew raised eyebrows from Paul. He took his lunch and went back to the bank of radio equipment, put his headphones on, and again scanned the frequencies.

“Did you get any information from your superiors about S.A. weapons stockpiles?” Peter asked of Sergeant Case, once they were gathered again in the basement. Case’s involuntary body language told them ‘no.’

“We had a…well, a sort of primitive way to detect S.A. weapons and supplies,” Doug said, explaining briefly the Palm PDA’s capabilities to ‘ping’ RFID chips, and the numerous locations of apparently huge weapons caches. “The report was sent to San Antonio. The response was less than complimentary.”

Case just nodded, looking down at the table for a minute. “Do you still have this information?”

“Not with us, but we have it back at the farm.”

“What about this PDA? Can your guy make more of these? Might be handy for squads like mine to see what’s out there.”

“I’m sure that could be arranged,” Doug said. “Are you headed our way?”

“We’re tasked with recon. There are supposed to be some other units in your vicinity, but obviously no one’s been on touch with you. We were scheduled to contact Command this evening. Schmitz over there confirmed Paul’s thoughts on radio comms—we’re not able to raise anyone, but our own short-range gear is fine. The world got a lot bigger as a result—no comms, no support, no resupply, no extraction.” One of Case’s men headed upstairs as they continued to talk.

“Where were you…” Peter began.

“Can’t say, because I don’t know,” Case replied.

Doug explained how to get to the Farm, knowing that traveling by stealth would require night travel, crossing the Mississippi by boat or by guarded bridge, or by vehicle. All but the last option would take days. Another option came to mind, but he’d need more time to think about it before bringing it up.

He next delved into his time with Regent Performance, including every detail of the RNEW products and the effects of combining the various altered food and beverage products; the observed behavior of those who used the food and Doug’s educated opinion on how the altered human behavior might be used by the S.A. in the prosecution of the War. Sergeant Case’s brow furrowed at Doug’s narrative, probably holding back some emotion about Doug’s personal involvement. It was not the first time that Doug had seen that look in the eyes of someone who heard what RNEW could do, by someone who helped it along.

Peter then discussed how the Segher Farm was operating, along with adjacent farms, towns and villages; and how each dealt with increasingly intrusive S.A. lackeys in the region. The Weerstand had been successful in persuading all but the most persistent of the patrols. That particular incident had taken far to the west of the Seghers, and the three ‘ambassadors’ met their end at a pig farm. Reports immediately surfaced about the men and their official vehicle heading toward Kansas City, where the vehicle was later found abandoned and out of fuel. The replacement S.A. patrol was wise enough to not repeat the intrusiveness of their predecessors. They were a half-hour into the discussion when Paul interrupted them.

“Guys, we’ve got something going on,” he said.

“Schmiddty? That true?” Case asked of his communications man who’d rejoined them.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Spill,” Case replied.

“Major S.A. troop movements heading west. Rail, road, air. Civilian traffic on the roads is being commandeered and people tossed out of their cars. Wholesale house-to-house searches of anyone who’d ever filled out ATF Form Four Four Seven Three. Rumors of arrests and disappearances. Unconfirmed information about U.S. units being hunted down by S.A. regulars. Anyone fighting back’s killed, sir.”

“Source?” Case asked.

“Multiple sources, some obviously ex-military. Police, civilians, multiple locations. Freqs included Ham, CB, and a pirated AM station,” Schmitz answered.

“And you know, I think,” Paul added, “that it’s a death sentence to get caught using transmitters of any kind.”

“Reliability of intel?”

“Fifty-fifty, Sarge,” Schmitz said.

“They could be sending false intel to flush, but I don’t think that’s likely,” Doug said. “That’s not really the way they work.”

“And you know this, how, exactly, Mister Peterson?” Case asked skeptically.

“In my experience they are much more about subtle intimidation, then followed by overt intimidation and then by overwhelming force; not scaring people into action and then hunting them down. It’s just not their style,” Doug answered. “Guns in private hands in the S.A. are illegal already. The ATF forty-four seventy-three forms that every one filled out to buy a firearm through a dealer is a menu for them to round up any weapons and anyone who didn’t turn them in. They probably have a large enough army, in uniform or not, to go house to house and find anyone they damned well please. If they used the ATF forms for guns, how long will it be before they use the FCC database for amateur radio owners too? It’s just a matter of time.”

Peter added to Doug’s thoughts. “Either way. Game changed today. If we were near a major interstate or rail line, we could probably see troop movements. And, that’d probably get us killed along the way.”

“Sergeant, if you have a couple minutes, there are a few other things I picked up,” Schmitz stated.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, and rose to join his men, talking quietly.

“Did you give Olga the one-time pads?” Doug asked Peter. The Weerstand used the ‘old-school’ encryption technique when possible, including until recently, coded radio broadcasts using the plain-text lettering. They would now, if possible rely on physical transfers of the encrypted paper messages. The pads and their encryption keys were the products of Jake Segher’s spare time.

“Twenty sets and keys. I need to take that hydraulic manifold apart and give Paul the reloading dies and put the press together, and get the primers from the air cleaner,” he replied. The Seghers had disassembled an ammunition reloading press to the smallest denominator, and packed the components inside the ‘spare parts’ that upon inspection, would bolt right up to a John Deere combine. Under the hood of the Suburban, one of the large ‘batteries’ for the diesel actually held bulk lead for casting bullets and several molds. The two ‘spare tires’ strapped to the roof of the Chevy held enough cleaned brass to create five thousand rounds of thirty-ought six ammunition. A few other hidden packages included the remaining components of a reloading setup, the possession of which was a crime in the S.A.

“I’m wondering if there’s a better way to get these guys over to the Farm and back west. Or maybe find a way to get them back in touch with the U.S. Army,” Doug said.

“I’m not sure I’m going to like what you’re coming up with, Doug,” Peter said. “What exactly are you proposing?”

“If the S.A. is on the move, and I have to believe that this would come sooner or later, trips like this one will be impossible,” Doug said. “What if, for instance, we were to take that old travel trailer out there, load up these men, and sweet-as-you-please, drive them back to the Farm?”

“Did it look road worthy to you?” Peter asked. “Because it sure didn’t to me.”

“Not particularly, but it might be worth a look. We’ve got to unload the Chevy anyway. We could check with Olga, see what she thinks at least.”

“You realize that if we get caught we’re all dead, right?” Peter said very quietly.

“And it would be different than this mornings’ trip in which way, exactly?” Doug replied.

Peter looked Doug in the eye and said, “If Olga gives us the OK, how do you plan to break this to our wives?”

“You’ll be the first to know when I come up with that,” Doug answered. “Either way, if there is some sort of major offensive going on, we don’t have much time.”

“Then we better move quickly,” Peter replied.

Distance Chapter 57

2014-01-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 17

6:10 a.m.

Peterson Cabin on the Segher Farm

Waking to the wind-up alarm was nothing new to Doug, although more than two months ‘home’ now with Julie, he still woke with a smile on his face, knowing she was with him.

They’d settled in to a very small home on Segher property, this one farther off the beaten path than any of the other homes. The little house had been a summer cabin or guest-house on occasion, barely modernized over its long history. Doug and Julie’s combined furnishings couldn’t fill the five small rooms. Tucked into the oak and hickory west of the main farm, the cabin cooked with wood, heated with wood, and other than a sixty-amp electrical service to run lights, a small water heater and the refrigerator, was off-grid. Since move-in day, Doug and Julie had used the lighting sparingly, but had used the electricity to listen in on the world outside of the dozen or so counties surrounding them. He wasn’t too surprised to see the battery-powered LED ‘power failure light’ in the kitchen glowing softly. Electric power had been spotty for more than a month now. He flipped on the battery-powered scanner and heard some garbled transmissions, but mostly static. An old AM/FM car radio, also running on twelve-volt power, was scanning the AM band, but nothing was transmitting.

‘That’s odd,’ Doug thought.

Julie remained asleep, snuggled deep in fleece sheets beneath the down comforter as Doug rose and built a new fire in the cookstove. He briefly looked outside, shining a big flashlight across the clearing beyond the porch. Still an hour before sunrise, there was no hint of light, but what surprised him the most was the ice built up on the window frame and porch rail. There had been no meaningful news in days, only stories fabricated from whole cloth for the pleasure of those in the media for the consumption of the people, obviously as directed by the State. Weather reports were out of the question.

Life in the State of America bore little resemblance to life in the United States of America, despite the geography. Since his return to Iowa and being reunited with Julie, Doug had thus far put his Regent life behind him, and had built a great deal of trust within the Weerstand. While he’d only had a half-dozen missions in the field, mostly drops of supplies and one-time code books, his thoughts on actions against the State were considered as seriously as any other. Unlike some in the Weerstand, Doug did not hold a job off-farm—entirely due to the probability that Regent would find him. His knowledge of both Regent and now S.A. beliefs also made him a bit too valuable to risk.

The Weerstand in southeast Iowa and in other adjacent regions had been fairly successful at quietly infiltrating the lower levels of local and government, never rising to positions of leadership that were obviously a counter to the direction coming from the new masters. A number of accidents had occurred in many parts of the state over the past two months, including several single-vehicle accidents, hunting tragedies, and unfortunate industrial incidents. The Weerstand proved to be exceptionally skilled at covert opertions. In only one case was direct action needed—in that case, the options were limited to a subsonic .22 delivered from a suppressed Walther PPKS, or a five-inch long ice pick. The operative in that case chose two rounds from the .22 moments after the target opened the door to his pickup, after meeting with a State of America representative. The point was well taken, as S.A. leaders from that point forward were always surrounded by men in black uniforms, openly carrying H&K MP-5 submachine guns. The increasingly visible protection just made the targets easier to find.

Beginning on the first of November, the Weerstand had begun to scout out several S.A. sympathizers in Des Moines, those openly kissing up to the new S.A. governor. When an appropriate point in time arrived and Weerstand operatives were ready, the resistance would quietly and efficiently deal with the S.A. There were no Weerstand people in the replacement queue—these targets were clearly causing the deaths of other Iowans, and it had to cease. Those operations would continue, until the threats were eliminated.

Doug’s debrief after his return from Denver had taken two full days, much of it spent with Jake Segher mapping out Doug’s route, his observations, and the mountain of signals intelligence stored in the obsolete Palm PDA. Jake had found a further layer of information in the chips found in the captured S.A. equipment, this layer identifying the weapon by type.

Jake double- and triple-checked Doug’s data and then re-checked the programming on the ‘ping’ program, before nearly throwing it out completely. The numbers couldn’t be correct, he’d thought. Blind tests though, using other captured equipment proved to him that the data collected by Doug probably was accurate. Between Doug’s departure on September Tenth and his return four days later, the scanner on the PDA had pinged four hundred thousand firearms, over a million MRE packs, and enough supporting gear and munitions to support around a half-million men in the field for three months. The numbers were staggering.

Doug and Roeland finally convinced Jake to memorialize the data in a formal report and to send it up the Weerstand chain of command. The report was sent out on September Twentieth, but there was little the Weerstand could do about the various caches of stockpiled materiel…until hostilities broke out in late October. By then though, many of the stockpiles had vanished, as the Weerstand wasn’t able to watch the suspected locations constantly. Without a dangerous trip through the area with another scanning device, the equipment was untraceable.

Jake had found a way to get through to U.S. forces with the information at the end of October, but the reply he received was at best condescending: “Information provided cannot be reliably confirmed; further, the amount of munitions and distribution of equipment to be frank, is ludicrous.” More than a little offended, Jake replied, “Recognize that while we have skin in the game, most of these weapons will be primarily pointed at you.”

No further communications had been received regarding the collected information, but the Weerstand took the knowledge as fact, and began full-time surveillance operations on several suspected storage sites. Scanning would be possible only within the parameters of frequently changing curfews--ruthlessly enforced and immensely dangerous.

S.A. ‘Security Partners’ ran the streets in the major cities within S.A. territory—the ‘Partners’ were often former gang members, with upper leadership comprised of the Statist faithful. They really had few rules to work around—if they believed you were a threat, a danger, or held something that they wanted, what was yours was theirs. If a ‘story’ didn’t ring true or could actually be verified, there was an even chance that an innocent person would be shipped out to points unknown. No one shipped out had ever been seen again---rumors were running rampant. In smaller cities and towns, a handful of the Partners usually intimidated enough local law enforcement into doing the dirty work. Such was the case in the towns near the Farm. The Weerstand had identified the local enforcers in the region, and would take action when the time came.

Private ownership of firearms, ammunition and reloading supplies overnight became a capital offense in the S.A., but enforcement was as dangerous to the S.A. as it was to the general public. That particular Executive Order was widely ignored outside of Denver, but gave any S.A. commander probable cause for anyone holding a concealed carry permit or anyone ever having purchased a firearm through the National Instant Criminal Background Check system. Despite the ‘law’ prohibiting ‘registration’ of firearms on a national basis, the backdoor database was there for the taking. Data-mining from other ‘anti-terrorist’ databases, cross referenced on demand, easily tracked other purchases, including ammunition and reloading components, ‘tactical’ equipment, water filtration equipment, or ‘long-term storage food.’ Most purchases were made on credit cards, easily tracing the transactions electronically, and completely open to the government to observe. Tying those specific transactions into security camera feeds in stores provided instant verification of who-bought-what. The banks couldn’t do anything about the data mining even if they wanted to—they’d accepted Federal bailouts, with all strings attached. No bank V.P. wanted to be the victim of an unfortunate ‘hot tub accident’ any more than he wanted to be investigated for ‘insider trading’ or arrested for various forms of ‘illegal material’ that was ‘found’ on his home computer, or die in a ‘single vehicle accident.’

Doug made Julie a simple breakfast to be taken in bed, just tea, toasted apple bread with butter, and bacon. ‘Second breakfast’ was usually between nine and ten in the morning and usually included eggs, fruit and juice, and a late lunch, usually around one-thirty or so.

“Good morning, mom-to-be,” he said softly as he nudged the door open with his knee.

“What time is it? It seems early,” Julie said as she pulled herself upright, a little awkwardly. “It’s cold.”

“Not quite seven. And it is cold. It’s only fifteen outside,” he said, kissing her good-morning.

“And fifty inside.”

“A little better. Almost sixty-five. I need to bring in more wood right away, and re-fill the bin downstairs today.”

“After you move that string of ham like you promised,” Julie said. Part of the cellar of the cabin was their long-term pantry, with many shelves filled with canning jars and cans. Down the middle though, Doug had strung up a dozen smoked hams, cured in Roeland’s smokehouse. Half of the hams were nearly a year old now, the younger ones around six months in cure. The curing string was getting difficult for Julie to navigate around.

“Did you eat?” Julie asked, taking a bite of the delicious bread.

“Yep. Ate at the stove—cooks’ prerogative. Did you get enough sleep?”

“After three I did. Someone was kicking,” Julie said, patting her unborn child.

“I told you that you should lay off the spicy food,” Doug said with raised eyebrows and lowered chin.

“I like peperoncini. Crave, even.”

“Then don’t blame me when Junior is doing gymnastics four hours later,” Doug replied. “I’ll go get some more wood. The hot water should be ready for a shower in about ten minutes.”

“Thanks. I never remember to switch that thing on.”

“They say memory’s the first thing to go,” Doug said, making a hasty retreat as his pillow hit the door jamb.

He suited up on the screen porch, now enclosed with heavy storm windows, barely keeping out the snow and ice. He donned insulated overalls, heavy boots and a fur lined hat, grabbing his leather mittens on the way out the door, the heavy canvas wood-carrier tucked under his arm.

The wood shed had been built under the trees behind the back porch, crafted from heavy oiled timbers and then shingled with wood and later, metal roofing. Doug and Peter had spent a couple days loading up this particular woodshed, stacking twelve cords of dried firewood, gathered more than a year before, split and dried under the cover of a ramshackle equipment shed. Each of the family homes had at least ten cords of wood on hand, with more downed trees around the property for future use. Thankfully, this year the vast majority of the wood had been cut and split with a Segher-built cutting and splitting machine that found a soft-spot in Doug’s life.

The machine, built on an old flat-bed trailer, had a log grapple mounted to a hydraulic crane that picked up sixteen foot sections of limbed trees and placed them in a cradle. The cradle had an operator-controlled conveyor, cutting the logs to length as needed with a minimal amount of work from the operator. Another operation raised a splitting plate at the end of the conveyor on one end of the sectioned log, where a hydraulic ram split the logs into four or eight pieces, depending on the split head installed. Two engines operated during processing, churning out a sizeable pile of wood with relatively little effort, compared to hand-cutting, splitting, and stacking. The machine, created by Arie and his late brother, had been modernized a bit over time, and was usually shared with non-family neighbors, after the Segher woods had been addressed. Doug was able to run the machine for a couple of days, and would have done more, but the early snows ended the season early. When the splitting season was done, Doug took an extra day to completely clean and lube the machine, replace an leaking hydraulic line, and rebuild one of the hydraulic controls.

The ice was thick on top of the six inches of snow, almost holding Doug’s weight, but with each step he crunched through the shell. He’d need to load at least a half-cord into the basement today, as the bin was nearly empty. Fortunately there was a chute built into the cellar for the purpose. He loaded the canvas carrier quickly, thinking about the larger task later in the day.

Doug had taken three steps toward the house when he felt the noise before hearing it, and stopped in his tracks. He’d just barely turned when some sort of aircraft—moving hundreds of miles an hour—roared overhead just above the trees. A second, and then a third followed immediately. He could just make out the blur—no definite shape, no lights, just incredible speed and unbelievable noise. He ran toward the house. Julie met him in the kitchen.

“What was that?!” she asked anxiously. “I thought it was an earthquake!”

“Military. Fighters, I think, but I just saw a blur. Three of them.”

“They knocked stuff off the walls!”

“I’m sure they did,” Doug said. “I need to check with Arie,” he said, noticing that the lights were off. “Did you shut off the lights?”

“No. I just hopped out of bed! What’s happening?”

“I have no idea. But I’m hoping to find out,” Doug said, picking up a hand-held CB radio. “Where are the batteries?”

“Second drawer,” Julie answered, pulling a wool wrap around her.

Doug fumbled with the battery pack for the radio, finally getting it loaded correctly, turned it on, tuned to the appropriate frequency, and was greeted by Arie’s calm voice.

“Fifty-seven here,” Doug answered.

“Kom binnenkort,” Arie replied in Dutch. ‘Come soon.’

“You OK by yourself?” Doug asked Julie.

“I should be. Should I block off the windows?” she asked. They had room-darkening inside shutters, in addition to the heavy curtains.

“Might not be a bad idea. I have no idea what’s going on. There’s nothing on the AM band, and not much on the scanner. Maybe Arie knows something.”

“Don’t waste time. Just bring that wood carrier inside. I’ll go get dressed.” Doug didn’t realize he had dropped the wood on the back porch.

A few minutes later, Doug pulled his old Dodge truck out of a smallish garage, dropping it into four-wheel-drive just to make it up the small incline in the driveway. Roeland had replaced a broken solenoid in the drivetrain after the truck had broken down way back in January, and surprised both Doug and Julie when they moved into the cabin with the newly functioning pickup. They both thought the truck had been sent to the boneyard.

The drive over to Arie and Maria’s was downright treacherous. The ice on the packed snow was more suited to a bobsled run than a farm road. Doug kept the truck lights turned off as he drove over. As he left the truck near Arie’s equipment shed, he felt the rumble of the low-flying jets once more. This time, he had a better view, not blocked by overhead trees.

Four jets, two-by-two, passed over the trees to the west, and banked northeast toward Des Moines. Normally, some lights on the wings would be flashing…these had none. The aircraft weren’t of a familiar type to Doug, either. They were too far away to see any markings, but the shape was wrong. They resembled an F-16, but the wings seemed too large. All four appeared to be carrying missiles and wing tanks.

“You’ve had a good look, ja?” Arie said, handing Doug a mug of tea. “What do you think?”

“Not ours,” Doug replied.

“French. Come inside now,” Arie said. “How’s our Julie?”

“Little one kept her up a fair amount last night. She’s fine though.”

“Don’t let her over-do. No more risks for her,” Arie said, referring to some serious pain that Julie had experienced a week before, working on her feet for many hours a day. They stepped through the door of the equipment shed into the battery-lit room. Two-dozen men stood inside, looking at a large map on the wall.

“Good morning, Doug,” Roeland said, coming in just behind him. He was in his deputy sheriff’s uniform, which was far too clean, all things considered.

“Morning. What’s going on?” he asked.

“That is the question of the day,” Jake answered. “Now that we’re all here, let’s get started.”

Doug hopped up on one of the workbenches on the side wall, looking over the map of the region.

“This morning we were introduced to part of the S.A.’s air force. Those were French-built Dussault Rafale fighters. Imported two weeks ago according to our intel, brought into Canada on freighters with container ships of spares and armament. From what we understand, there are two dozen of those in Des Moines at present, with around sixty overall in North America.” No one spoke.

“What else can we expect?” Doug asked.

“Good question, and we have part of an answer. While the Navy has been otherwise occupied in parts of the world, numerous freighters have been making more-or-less normal schedules on the East Coast. Some of the evac ships from Europe were stopped and searched, and numerous passengers kept aboard while others were allowed to enter the U.S. Many of the freighters were container ships, with containers sent to various major cities under Federal protection. Sources in Ohio and Pennsylvania have confirmed that those containers held military equipment. Five roll-on, roll-off ships docked in Philadelphia and New York while the New Republic celebrated. At least ten other ships carrying what we believe to be main battle tanks arrived in New Republic ports and then shipped that equipment to several staging areas.”

“French, too?” someone asked.

“French LeClercs, equipped for urban warfare. German Leopard 2A variants, Russian T-72’s and T-90 variants,” Jake said. “The vast majority of those came into Free Canada. From what we have gathered, there may be a thousand tanks under S.A. command.”

Someone let out a low, descending whistle.“Does the United States know about this?” another voice asked.

“They’ve been given information. We have no idea if they believe it or not,” Jake replied.

“One minute, Jake, if you would,” Doug asked.

“Sure, Doug. What’s on your mind?”

“Who runs them?”

“Who runs…” Jake began.

“Tank crews. Who drives? Who’s the tank commander? It’s not like you’re going to take some kid off the street and drop them into these and expect them to know what they’re doing, right?”

“We believe that the S.A. has trained a number of crews virtually. With tank simulators,” Jake said. Someone else laughed.

“Gary, what’s on your mind?” Jake asked.

“Tanks aren’t video games,” the man answered. “I drove an Abrams back in the day, against T-72’s and T-80’s. There isn’t any substitute for actual seat time inside any of them. Furthermore, against an A-10 or any of the newer drones, you don’t have a chance unless you have air superiority, which I doubt the S.A. can create.”

“Point taken,” Jake said. “But none of that will stop them from creating a whole lot of chaos.”

“One more thing,” Doug said. “I’d wager that ammunition isn’t common between those tanks, other than maybe the Russian ones, right?”

“Correct, from what we know,” Jake replied.

“Wouldn’t it be fun, to be able to get into the S.A. supply channels, and send the French ammunition to a Russian tank division?” Many of the men chuckled at Doug’s suggestion.

“There’s gotta be a way to get into their organizational system and screw with them,” Doug said. “Ten minutes of database access and you’re there.”

“We will take that under advisement,” Jake said with a smile. “I know just the guy.”

Distance, Chapter 56

2013-12-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Wednesday morning,

September Thirteenth

3:43 a.m.

North Platte, Nebraska

Doug was rudely awakened by a security agent pounding on the cab of the semi. The rain and wind continued through the night, making rest for Doug, crashed out in the passenger seat difficult, although Hempstead slept soundly in the sleeper compartment.

“Thirty-minute warning!” The security agent yelled.

“Bright and early,” Ezra said, pulling back the black curtain. “Best get ready for the road. Breakfast will be first-come, first served. We need to get movin’.”

“This normal?” Doug asked, pulling on his boots.

“No such thin’ as normal anymore.”

The temperatures outside the truck were bitterly cold, more typical of early December in the Great Plains than mid-September.

“This’ll be a real long, shitty day,” Ezra said, pulling his cap low over his eyes. “Bastards want us to drive on ice. Stupidity of the fifth power.”

“The fifth power? I don’t understand.” Doug replied as they walked to the truck stop. Hempstead stopped for a moment, and looked at him with a little smile before answering.

“Baron de Montesquieu. French philosopher, died in seventeen seventy-five. Defined the first three powers: legislative, executive and judic’ry. Ramonet expanded them: the fourth is the mass media. The fifth could be defined as the economy. Allegiance to the god of the fifth power—the economy—puts us at risk. Stupidity.”

Ezra continued towards the diner, leaving Doug stopped in his tracks. “Who are you?”

“I’ve only been a driver for six years,” Hempstead replied with a smile, looking at Doug over his shoulder as he continued to walk.

“What did you do prior to that time, if I may ask?”

“Chief operating officer of Price Pacific Technology. Before that, chief technology officer. Built it from a startup thirty-four years ago,” Ezra said as they reached the door. They got in line for breakfast.

“How…why are you…” Doug asked before Ezra cut him off.

“Ever read ‘Atlas Shrugged?’”

“Well, yeah. In high school, maybe the first year out.”

“Our company was being killed by the Federal Government. We didn’t cooperate with certain agencies that wanted access to our products, pre-release. They wanted us to build in back doors for their security snoops to spy on people. We turned ‘em down. They attacked us on the IRS side. Then they denied us other things…like medical insurance. Then our ‘environmental audits’ came up dirty. Then liens on our intellectual property. Seizure of working capital—in lieu of money claimed owin’ on unemployment accounts. All of that, they said could be wiped clean, if we cooperated. We’d seen it comin’, a long time ahead. In the space of eight hours, we erased all of the data that the Feds wanted to get their filthy mitts on, nuked the backups, hammered the hardware…let the entire staff go with a years’ severance. Then went all Galt on them. Off of their tax rolls, out of their networks. Only five of us knew enough to be useful to the Feds. Two have now passed on, the rest of us are out there in the ether.”

“So you went into trucking?” Doug asked.

“My dad ran a truckin’ business when I was a kid. Honest labor, lets me see the country,” Ezra said, picking up the breakfast tray. “Besides that, I get to meet some interestin’ people.”

Breakfast was served cafeteria style again, and consisted of reconstituted eggs, warmed over pre-cooked bacon, and some sort of canned bread and powdered butter. It was awful on all accounts, and Doug was unconcerned that any of it contained RNEW—it wasn’t up to Regent standards.

The ‘thirty-minute warning’ stretched into five and a half hours before the first truck took the road. The ice on the roads was still present, but temperatures seemed to be warming. The five or six hour trip from North Platte to Des Moines took thirteen hours, with a fueling stop in Omaha thrown in, and a complete search of the convoy for good measure.

Thursday morning,

September Fourteenth

5:04 a.m.

Des Moines, Iowa

The Des Moines truck stop—this one on the far west side of the city—was in only slightly better shape than the North Platte location. The convoy arrived a little before midnight, and Doug thanked Ezra for the lift. Doug found it only moderately difficult to fall asleep—his future with Julie was now only hours away.

The truck stop had a separate wing with micro rooms to rent-generally a queen sized bed, a flat-panel television, a half-bath, small refrigerator and microwave. Doug rented one for a twelve-hour period, paying fifty dollars in gold coin, and a five-dollar tip. For five peaceful hours, Doug slept, being roused by a soft alarm he’d set on the alarm clock beside the bed. He rose and quickly showered and dressed, thinking about the day ahead.

He needed to find a way to get to the Farm without means of identification, assuming that Regent would be watching all conventional means of transport, all of which required I.D. and in many cases, governmental clearance. Being ‘afoot’ was an almost certain guarantee to be picked off or picked up, according to the now-departed Ezra Hempstead; bicycle travel—assuming he could even find one--just as risky. He’d need to find someone heading in the general direction of southeast Iowa and would have to go from there.

Dressing in more worn than serviceable clothes and a very old cap, Doug checked out of his room by six a.m. The ridiculously expensive ‘Continental Breakfast’ consisted of an English muffin with some tired peanut butter, reconstituted apple juice, and strong, black tea. He scouted out the restaurant for potential rides to the southeast.

The handful of people in the restaurant weren’t truck drivers, deliverymen or anyone that Doug thought might be a prospect for a ride. To the left, a husband, wife and three children, none of whom looked like they’d had clean clothes in a month; to the right, two solitary women dressed in heavy clothing, each holding their hot tea in both hands, trying to capture the warmth. He’d expected more people at this time of day—truckers, factory workers, farmers, starting the day off.

“You need anything else, pardner?” the cook/waiter asked Doug. The man, in his early forties, was dressed in typical short-order cook fashion, working the entire restaurant solo.

“Just lookin’ for a ride at this point,” Doug replied quietly. “Know of anyone heading out?”

The cook regarded Doug for a moment before answering. “Legit? Nope,” the man said quietly, filling Doug’s mug with more tea. “Bastard trips, yeah, for a price. Where you headin’?”

“Down south of Fairfield.”

“That’s what, damn near a hundred miles from here?” the cook asked with raised eyebrows.

“Probably, yeah.”

“How’d ya get so far from home?”

“Coming from Denver,” Doug answered.

“Denver? Jesus Christ. You’re comin’ from the pit of evil? You a Fed?” the cook hissed. The other people in the restaurant heard clearly.

“Used to be. Long story.”

“Advice for you, pal. Lose anything that says ‘Fed’. Them’s the enemy. This place looks like it does because they’ve ‘jacked all the food trucks comin’ our way. Anyone finds out you’re a Fed, you might as well run for your life, cause they’ll just as soon kill ya as look at ya.”

“What about you?” Doug asked quietly. “Why the advice?”

“My son’s out there someplace, workin’ for the Department of Recovery. Told him two months ago to get the Hell out, but of course you can’t tell your kid what to do—they gotta figure it out for themselves. He’s thinkin’ he’s gonna be a big-shot.”

“Well, Denver’s a good place to be from. There’s a lot of bad stuff goin’ on there…most probably hasn’t made the news. I think a plane was shot down out there a couple days ago.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Saw the fireball and the smoke. I was supposed to fly out of there. Hitched a ride on a convoy,” Doug said. “So, any ideas on me catching a ride?”

The cook paused again for most of a minute before answering. “Yeah, I know someone. You got money, right? I mean, real money.”

“I’ve got some,” Doug replied.

“Gimme a little while,” the cook said, before heading back to the kitchen area and out of sight.

Doug fished out his Palm device, and again beat the program on the first level, lost the second and was two moves from beating the third level, when the cook came by again.

“Hundred bucks. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, barely,” Doug replied.

“Ten minutes, out that door,” the cook said pointing to the south.

“Seriously,” Doug replied.

“Yeah. A chunk of that money goes to me, by the way. So yeah, dead serious.”

Doug finished the ‘game’ again enabling the RFID tracking program, almost out of boredom, as the minutes passed. He finished his tea, took a few minutes to visit the men’s room, and then headed out the south door. A white box van emblazoned with ‘Iowa Organic’ waited, idling. The cold rain poured down beyond the overhead canopy.

“That’s the one,” the cook said, looking over Doug’s shoulder. “You don’t have the cash when they make the transfer, you’ll get busted up, though. So be damned sure you’re ready to get in that van.”

“Thanks. For everything,” Doug said, getting in the van.

“Don’t sit there, just get in the back,” the driver said, pulling away from the curb as soon as Doug closed the door. He found a seat in the back of the van, on a bench normally used for cargo. “Five minutes we go into a warehouse. You’ll pay the guys inside. You’ll then meet the driver heading wherever the Hell it is you want to go. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Several blocks away, Doug couldn’t tell exactly where or how far they’d traveled, they pulled into a darkened door of a warehouse. The driver killed the lights and shut off the truck. Doug heard the overhead door of the warehouse close, and the warehouse lights flickered on. The rear door of the van opened from the outside.

“Good morning, Mister Peterson,” a voice said, startling Doug. Kevin Martinez, in his wheelchair, sat opposite the open door. “Welcome to Iowa.”

Doug’s heart sank, and he slumped back into his seat. ‘Regent,’ he thought. ‘They’re going to kill me.’

“Out of the van, if you would,” Martinez said. “Grab your gear.”

He did as he was told, climbing out of the van as the other men in the room went about their business.

“Come over to the office,” Martinez said. Doug was surprised that there weren’t weapons trained on him. They entered a small ‘manager’s office’ and Martinez closed the door.

“Finally getting the Hell out, huh?” Martinez asked. “Welcome back to the world,” offering his hand. Kevin Martinez was now working on a beard and had a freshly shaved head, with several tattoos on his neck and arms he’d not seen before.

Doug shook it, not quite knowing what was going on.

“You’re the last one that I figured could make it out. I’ve been wondering when you’d bail.”

“I don’t understand,” Doug said.

“Eight of us died in a plane crash two days ago, as far as the Company knows. No survivors. Went down in the storm the other night in Lake Superior, the story goes. Eventually they’ll find some wreckage.”

“I figured you were…” Doug started. “You’re not with Regent? I thought I was a dead man.”

“Regent killed my brother. Saturday morning. Captive bolt-gun to the back of the head. They don’t know I found that out. He was in Chicago at the time.”

Doug didn’t speak for a moment. “Same as Francine and Rob Dowling,” Doug said.

“Yeah. Probably the Kliests as well. Now I know who did it.”

“I’m sorry about…”

“Don’t be. He was an asshole. Still, he died only because he’s related to me. Corporate has a loose cannon and they’re cleaning things up, or so they think. I have enough on them to end it.”

“You’re…Aren’t you just as guilty?” Doug asked quietly.

“I would be in a court of law, yeah. I know too much. But what I know won’t end up in court. Some of my teams have lost family recently, dead, disappeared, whatever. Several of us were on that plane that ‘went down in the lake’. My guys are getting outfitted to hunt and kill. They’ll be starting soon,” Martinez said.

“How did you find me?”

“Damned few people heading east from Denver these days. You weren’t hard to spot on the Regent surveillance network, especially with continuous facial recognition. You disappeared though for awhile in Omaha, or so thinks Regent. You will be spotted headed to Sioux Falls, and then your electronic I.D. will go off line when the truck hits Williston, North Dakota, all according to the Regent intelligence network.”

“What?” Doug asked stupidly.

“Your escape east has been covered--by me. Regent doesn’t know that I have a slew of tunnels into their network, and that it’s pretty damned easy to manipulate their system.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Good. Then shut up and listen. If you have anything Regent, get rid of it immediately. Throw it in the microwave over there, for instance,” Martinez said, pointing to the dirty microwave on the opposite wall. “Once the lid blows from the pressure cooker, that whole company and anyone associated with it is dead. You understand?”

“Yeah,” Doug replied “How did you know…”

“Your family has a pretty nice farm. With borrowed satellite imagery, it’s easy to see who’s there and when,” Kevin said. “Where else were you going to go? Your wife’s pregnant, still there on the farm. Logical that you’d head this way. Once the system spotted you on that truck, I logged into the system, figured out the truck manifest and destination. Coming through Des Moines. Your truck pinged every single receiver on the highway and just confirmed location and arrival time in Des Moines. Three truckstops left in the city, only one on the east side. It wasn’t difficult. The two ladies in the restaurant helped I.D. you for me. Twenty dollar gold piece and you can buy a lot of friendship.”

“Who are these people?” Doug said, pointing to the warehouse workers.

“Normal people, hoping to make a buck. They’re good at getting stuff where it needs to be and getting it there without legal interference.”

Doug sat in one of the worn office chairs, unable to think of what to do next.

“Bit much to take in one big bite, I think,” Kevin Martinez said, passing Doug a worn flask. “Take a shot of that.”

Doug did, without thinking too much about it. The liquor was absurdly smooth and unlike anything he’d ever consumed. Spiced with something. “What is that?” Doug said, passing it back to Martinez.

“Moonshine. From a little town in North Carolina.”

“It’s…perfect.”

“Yeah. Tough to get unless you’ve got connections,” Martinez said, taking a drink himself.

“You’re in the ‘shine business now?” Doug said.

“Now? You mean ‘still’. We all need a little sideline. Provides me a certain layer of security, otherwise not available to me in my former employ. It’ll also conveniently provide you a ride not far from your farm.”

“I really don’t know what to say,” Doug said. “I have a million questions.”

“You’ve got about five minutes, and you’re on that outbound Freightliner. Make them good questions.”

Doug didn’t know whether he should completely trust Martinez or not. This could all be an elaborate ruse…there was no way to be sure either way.

“Who is your target? The people that killed my friends?” Doug asked, quickly coming to the correct conclusion that this was the most important thing he could ask.

“Class A dickhead in Columbus. Currently a V.P. by the name of Holdren.” The name triggered Doug’s memory.

“I’ve met him. Along with his boss…Slocum, and another V.P. by the name of…Salvatore,” Doug said.

“Orders came from that office. Only that office,” Martinez said.

“You’ve not met him, or the other two?” Doug asked.

“Only Slocum, and from a distance. He seemed to think I was less of a man because I’m in a chair, or that was my impression from a ten-second introduction.”

“No, that’s a perfectly accurate impression actually. I met the three of them here at the Regent plant, back in May. Slocum didn’t talk much, but when he did…he knew things he shouldn’t normally have known, and used words like weapons. Personal attack, I mean,” Doug illustrated. “The other two, well, they seemed afraid of him.”

“He’s my number one target. Problem is, he’s been off-grid for a week. I have no idea where he is….and that’s saying something,” Martinez said. “The other two, well, they’re easy.”

“What about after that?”

“Crawl in a hole and pull a rock over me until it’s over.”

“What is the ‘it’ you’re referring to?”

“Civil war of course. You’re seriously not that dense, Peterson. You know this has been coming.”

“It’s…comforting to hear someone else say it, actually,” Doug replied.

“Coming soon. Weeks, not much longer.”

“How do you know? Why are you so sure?”

“New Republic and the President are on the same side. Think about that for a minute,” Martinez said, looking at a clipboard on his desk. “President’s going to win, unless something dramatic happens fairly soon.”

“I don’t get it. The same side…how can that possibly be the truth?”

“President is talking nothing but central control from the get-go, from top to bottom to get rid of all the ‘problems’ that have been ‘standing in the way of progress’. New Republic is pointing out exactly the same things…just blaming the Federal Government for the problems. Exactly the same things. Same side. All those purges and resignations? He’s not shuffling the deck. He’s stacking it.”

“So you’re saying the Federal Government is going to start the next Civil War?” Doug asked, taking another swig from the flask.

“Not all of the Federal Government. Just maybe the top third of it. Or more correctly, ‘a third’ of it,” Martinez said, taking the flask back and taking a drink himself.

“Why? Why on God’s green earth would they do this?”

“You can only fool the people for so long. Once they start to figure it out, or once the whole thing is about to blow, you need to step in and make sure you stay on top of the heap. That’s all it is—maintaining power. Absolute, unquestioned power. Here and globally,” Martinez said. “You better get moving. That’s your driver,” he said, pointing to the window of the office, where a man was looking in, tapping his watch.

“Good luck, Doug. Hope you have a good life,” he said, shaking Doug’s hand again.

“Thank you, Kevin. I hope you do as well.”

Distance, Chapter 55

2013-10-27T19:04:00.002-07:00

Tuesday morning,

September Twelfth

7:14 a.m.

Doug stood before the window of his soon-to-be-empty apartment, looking out at the Front Range and thirteen columns of black smoke rising from many areas of the city and suburbs.

He’d risen early, unable to sleep, and packed the last of his few belongings in the low-priority baggage to be shipped to Regent Columbus. His highest priority items resided in a very business-like backpack, containing all of the elements an individual would need for three days to a week, including an M9 Beretta and magazines. On the company aircraft that Doug was expecting, the pack would travel with him unchecked. Travel on commercial airlines would see the bag emptied, the weapon secured in a locked enclosure and placed under constant supervision of an armed and uniformed air marshal. Doug would also have to pay a surcharge for the privilege of bringing a firearm aboard.

Doug had noted the fires, appearing to burn unchecked, not long after sunrise. The lone AM radio station did not mention them, only providing innocuous local news and weather forecasts, and some puff pieces on upcoming Federal appointees, followed by meaningless story about a high-end invitation only dinner and reception for several un-named foreign dignitaries, to be held in the Zone at an undisclosed location. He’d turned on the television, finding only black screens on all channels. FM radio stations seemed to be operating normally, until he noted there were no DJ’s announcing songs, filling the transitions with meaningless drivel, or news at the top and bottom of the hour. It seemed fully automated on all stations. Doug also noted that the little LED on the ‘cable box’, most likely the hub of the apartments’ surveillance system, was dark—it had never been ‘off’ in Doug’s memory.

Finally, at nearly seven-thirty, two men from ‘Preferred Shipping’ arrived at Doug’s door, quickly loading up a single hand-truck with Doug’s things. Both were in their late twenties or early thirties, wearing worn and not particularly clean coveralls with a company logo. Doug welcomed them further into the apartment.

“This is it? Seriously?” the larger of the two asked—he reminded Doug of a linebacker. “Thought there’d be more. You not taking any of this?” he said, waving at the furniture.

“Belongs to the company,” Doug said. “This was a temp job.”

“Pretty nice digs,” said the second man, a thin, wiry twenty-something with numerous tattoos. “Jeezus pleezus, lookit them fires,” he said, looking out over the city.

“Yeah. Saw them at sunrise. What’s going on? There’s nothing on the radio,” Doug said. Linebacker stopped his companion from replying.

“We gotta get moving. We got orders to get you to DIA as soon as we can. We gotta non-disclosure against talkin’. Can’t even give ya our names. Sorry.”

“You guys want some coffee before we go? Just going to waste otherwise,” Doug said, taking a different tack. “Or the maid’ll take it. Can’t take it with me.” He noted that the men exchanged quick glances.

“Well, we’re not supposed to,” the larger man said.

“I’m not telling,” Doug said. “Let me get a couple of mugs.”

Doug retrieved two Regent mugs from the kitchen, and filled them both with some of the Kona coffee provided to him.

“Cream and sugar?” Doug asked, getting both out from the kitchen.

“You serious? This is real coffee? And sugar?” Tattoo asked.

“Company provided it. Hard to get,” Doug replied.

“Impossible. Not hard,” Linebacker said, pouring an ample dose of cream into the mug, and two tablespoons of sugar.

“Yeah, I know. It’s getting pretty shitty out there,” Doug said, sitting down at the polished mahogany dining table. “Have a seat if you like.”

“We would so get our asses fired if our boss knew about this,” Tattoo said, pulling up a chair. “I haven’t had a coffee in months.”

Linebacker sat down across from Doug. “Uh, Mister Peterson, do you, uh, have any plans for your leftover stuff? I mean your leftover stuff in the kitchen?”

“No, not a one. Want it? There’s not much in there, but the Company will just toss it before someone new moves in,” Doug replied.

“It’d be a shame to waste it,” Linebacker said. “You mind if we take that along?”

“Not at all. There’s not much in the fridge, just that leftover cream and some stuff that oughta get tossed. I had the concierge send up the cream and the orange juice for breakfast, and that loaf of bread. Freezer’s got some stuff though. Bacon, a few steaks and chops,” Doug said offhandedly, seeing the reaction of the two men. “Split it if you like.”

“Uh, OK. We can take care of that for you,” Tattoo said.

“Now, could you give me a little news from the outside?” Doug asked quietly, having provided them payment in advance. They sat there for a few moments before either answered.

“You didn’t hear this from us, OK? We’d get canned if we tell anyone anything, and canned in this town is as good as being on the street, which is just this side of dead.”

“Didn’t hear a thing from you two,” Doug said, taking a drink of coffee.

“Riots all over the place. Feds tried a house-to-house search for guns or some-such, some kid fresh from that goat-screw down in Mexico took exception and they shot him dead. That was last night about eleven,” Tattoo told Doug. “That was over in Lakewood.”

Linebacker continued. “Word got out quick. Bunch of black-wearin’ thugs started showing up on other people’s doorsteps, just bang in the door with a big ol’ sledge and start looking for God knows what. Someone popped one of those Feds in the face with a twelve-gauge when they busted inta his place, and then the neighbors joined in. Them fires are the Feds’ tanks a-burnin’.”

“Tanks?” Doug asked.

“Might as well be, yeah. Some of them armored things left over from Afghanistan, sorta looks like a semi-tractor. Big ‘n black and a chain gun up in the roof. They burn real good, you get enough fuel on ‘em,” Linebacker said.

“That’s gotta have the Feds shittin’ bricks,” Doug said, in a more casual dialect.

“You got that right. Getting the Hell outta here’s about the smartest move out there.”

“What about you guys? This thing comes apart, you got a plan?”

They exchanged looks before Tatoo answered. “We got plans. We’re gonna be just fine. Question is, where you headin’?”

“Supposed to go to Columbus, finish up with the company, then a nice quiet corner of nowhere.”

“Bad shit comin’, Mister Peterson. Bad shit.”

“Yeah. If this is the way it looks in our temporary Capitol, what does the rest of the country look like?” Doug asked. Neither of the men answered.

They finished up the coffee, and Tattoo made a trip down to their truck to retrieve moving boxes. Within ten minutes, the kitchen was stripped of all remaining foodstuffs, soaps and detergents; everything packed in boxes and secured to a second hand truck. Both men were in considerably better moods as they left the apartment.

8:20 a.m.

Doug rode in the back seat of the double-cab box van, showing his I.D. badge as the van was searched at the roadblock, finally getting the nod from the armed and armored security team. Linebacker radioed in to his dispatcher on the company radio, briefly stating they had ‘the package’ and were heading to DIA. The dispatcher acknowledged the pickup, with orders to report from DIA for their next assignment.

“Surprised they didn’t open up the boxes and search them, too,” Doug said.

“They’ve got our seals on them,” Tattoo replied. “We’re bonded shippers, so they don’t search our stuff once we seal it up. Penalty for not playing by their rules is wicked steep.”

“Good thing that we’re following the rules then,” Doug said with a chuckle.

“Yessir!” Linebacker said as he laughed. “Them porterhouses woulda been wasted in them boys.”

Interstate Seventy, heading east toward the Denver International interchange was virtually deserted. Doug noted numerous additional plumes of smoke on the eastern side of the metro area as well.

“Same thing over here? Feds?” Doug asked.

“Could be. Could be boys just gettin’ off on gettin’ even, too. Lotta that goes on outside the Zone,” Linebacker replied. “But usually only at nighttime. Fires mostly burn out by dawn.”

The van approached the airport, cruising along the empty Pena Boulevard. Doug contemplated the flight to Columbus, and what he’d do once he arrived. Linebacker suddenly slammed on the brakes, jarring Doug in the back seat and forcing him to grab whatever he could as the van slewed to a stop. A rapidly expanding cloud of fire and thick black smoke rose near the Airport.

“Jeezus,” Tattoo said as the van stopped in the middle of the road. “You think sum’n bagged a frickin’ plane?”

“Dunno,” Linebacker replied, “but no way in Hell am I drivin’ up to all that security in a van that looks like a truck bomb.” He turned the van around and headed west in the eastbound lanes, soon crossing over to the other side of the boulevard.

“Sorry, Mister Peterson. You’re not getting to the airport today,” Tattoo said as Linebacker radioed in to dispatch.

“Dispatch, this is Fourteen. Something bad just happened at the airport. We’re not going out there,” Linebacker said. No response from the dispatcher came through.

“We gotta get off this highway,” Tattoo said. “This ain’t a good place to be. Feds gonna come down like a hammer again.”

“Take the next exit,” Doug said. “Bunch of hotels to the south of here. What do you mean by ‘again?’”

“Some government people bit it last week at the airport. Any truck or car moving got shot all to Hell by helos. Friends of ours were running a cargo load. The never knew what hit ‘em.”

Linebacker took the next exit, quickly but legally, driving the posted limit. The flashing lights of a Colorado State Patrol car met them, speeding north toward the airport. It passed them without notice.

“Next one on the left,” Doug said. “Over there. There’s a few vans in the parking lot like this one.”

Tattoo was scanning the horizon toward the city. “Choppers coming. Jeez. Six of ‘em.”

The van slowed, pulled into the parking lot, and casually parked near three other box vans.

“Maybe it’s time for a late breakfast,” Doug said.

“We ain’t really dressed for a place like this,” Tattoo said.

“It’ll be OK. We’ll just tell ‘em the truth,” Doug replied. Linebacker took a smaller radio from the dash of the van.

“This’n links to the main radio,” he said to Doug. “Maybe dispatch’ll have an idea what’s goin’ on.”

The hotel restaurant had a dozen or so people inside, many looking to the northeast as the smoke plume towered into the sky. The waitress greeted Doug at the front desk.

“C…Can I help you?” she asked shakily.

“Well, we were heading to the airport when something happened…we figured we should maybe come here,” Doug said. “Can we stay here? Tom and Larry here are helping me ship some important materials,” he said quietly.

“Uh, sure. No one knows what happened. Take a seat anywhere. I’ll get you some menus and coffee,” she said, and then asking quietly, “Do you have money?”

“Yeah. We’re good,” Doug spoke confidently. “I’ve got this.”

The waitress went to get a carafe of coffee as they took their seats. Tattoo asked, “So which one of us is Larry?”

Two hours passed before ‘Tom’ and ‘Larry’ heard from their dispatcher, who ordered them back to the Metro area for their next assignment. While they were waiting, speculation ran wild in the hotel and the restaurant about what had happened at the airport, but no television coverage of it appeared, other than a simple statement ‘that at the present time, DIA had been closed due to an incident.’ The statement was not repeated.

Both of the men apologized to Doug for leaving him short of his destination, and suggested that he might be able to catch a ride on an Eastbound convoy of semis, which were on regular schedules departing every few hours.

Doug would be left to fend for himself, his two large suitcases, suit bag, a soft-side attaché and backpack in the restaurant of the Front Range Suites. Doug’s essentials were in the backpack and the attaché, which was actually a detached portion of the backpack.

“Hang on a second before you go,” he told ‘Tom’ and ‘Larry.’ He headed over to the desk of the concierge.

“May I be of service?” the well-groomed young man asked.

“Yes. It appears that my flight out today will not be taking off. Do you have rooms available?” Doug asked, fishing out his Regent credit card and sliding it into the hands of the concierge, who looked at it briefly and handed it back without entering into the computer. Months before, Doug had concealed the card in a very thin scan-proof sleeve in his backpack. In theory, the case prevented the embedded chip to be detected ‘on the fly’. In reality, Doug had no idea if the technology really worked.

“We are fully booked at this time, but we should have a large contingent of guests checking out within the next two hours, leaving on ground transport. Would that be of interest?”

“Yes. That would be fine. May I store those bags until that time?”

“But of course. I will reserve a suite for you, Mister Peterson. How many nights?”

“Well, I’m uncertain on that. Have you heard when the airport will reopen?”

“Unfortunately not, sir. I cannot hazard a guess.”

“Let’s call it three nights then, just in case.”

“Excellent, sir. Until your room is available, you are welcome to use our conference center at your convenience.”

“How is your communications service? Still intact? I’ve been working at the FDA downtown for quite a while.”

“Apologies, sir, there are some limited connections to the Federal network, but only with proper login and authorization. Unfortunately, telephones are a bit spotty as well.”

“No problem. I may just take a stroll around. Pretty day for a walk.”

“It is at that, sir,” the concierge said, signaling to a bellhop to retrieve Doug’s bags, tag and store them. Doug paid the bill for ‘brunch’ with his Regent card—deliberately—and then put it back into the metallic sleeve.

“Mind if I catch a ride with you two?” Doug asked ‘Tom’ and ‘Larry’, who both raised their eyebrows at the question. “Just drop me at that truck stop you mentioned.”

“What about your stuff?” ‘Larry’ asked.

“They’ll store it. They think I’m staying here tonight. With luck, I’ll be on a truck headed east by then.”

“Sure. Saddle up. Thanks for brunch, Mister Peterson. Can’t tell my girlfriend about this though. She’d kill me if she found out I had eggs benedic’,” ‘Larry’ replied.

Five miles south of the cluster of hotels, the van pulled into the truck stop, just off of Airport Boulevard. The parking lot was packed, with easily more than a hundred trucks parked.

“Weird to see this many mid-day,” ‘Tom’ said.

“Yeah. Should be on the road this time a-day,” Larry replied. “You might be in luck, Mister Peterson.”

“Maybe so,” Doug said as the van stopped near the far end of the fueling island. He grabbed is pack, thanked the men again, and closed the door. The van quickly turned around and left as Doug made his way up the fueling island, checking out the trucking companies along the way. He knew most of their coverage areas as well as they did, in his former life.

“Anyone heading east?” Doug asked two drivers conversing as their tanks filled.

“Damn near ever’ one. Needin’ a lift?” said a rotund, overall-clad man about Doug’s age.

“Yeah. Doesn’t look like flying’s an option,” Doug said.

“Got that right. Hell’a mess over there,” the second driver said. He looked to be too old to be driving. “Where ya headed?”

“Des Moines.”

“I’m headed to Chicago,” the first man replied. “We leave in twenty minutes. You got some scratch?”

Doug looked the older man in the eye and asked, “What’s the goin’ rate?”

“Whatever the driver can get, a-course,” the younger driver replied with a wink.

“Twelve hour drive, probably a stop or three for security, maybe a few Federal searches along the way, I’d guess?” Doug said.

“Depends,” the older driver replied.

“This a Federal convoy, or private?” Doug asked.

“Depends,” the driver repeated. Doug was getting frustrated.

“OK. Let’s cut the bullshit then,” Doug said, taking out his Federal ID and FDA badge, which caused both men to step back involuntarily. “I have business in Des Moines. These can be used to make things easier, or more difficult. What’s your price?”

“How’s fifty bucks gold?” the man answered quickly.

“I don’t have any ten-coins. Call it good at sixty, and no one will see these for the duration,” Doug said, putting his obsolete Federal ID’s away. The younger driver laughed and shook his head.

“Money’s more than fine. And keep that ID handy. Might smooth things along the way. Ya never know,” the older driver said, shaking Doug’s hand. “Sorry about that.”

“Not to worry,” Doug answered.

They cleared the truck stop exit on schedule, part of a fifty-truck convoy protected by private security ahead, within, and behind the line of trucks. Lead and chase vehicles surrounded the convoy, jumping ahead to block off on-ramps, provide scouting of the highway ahead of the main convoy, and trailing units keeping an eye on any vehicles that might approach from the rear. There was no citizens’ band radio chatter on orders of the convoy commander. Without anything but Government approved radio within radio range of Denver, Doug and the driver, Ezra Hempstead, had little to listen to, other than the commands of the convoy commander to the security team, and some ancient Country Western music dating from the sixties.

Doug told Ezra that the business in Des Moines wasn’t related to official FDA business, which was correct of course—he was no longer employed there. As the miles ticked away, Ezra told Doug to ‘catch some Z’s while you can’. Just outside of Sterling, Colorado he took the advice, made himself comfortable, and dozed off.

Two hours later, the truck lurched to a sudden stop, waking Doug from a particularly nice dream. The weather had turned while he slept—he woke to steady rain and gusting wind from the north.

“You OK?” Ezra asked.

“Yeah. Surprised me that we stopped is all,” he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Where are we?”

“Five miles outta North Platte.”

“Checkpoint?”

“Looks like the road’s closed. Expect we’ll be here awhile,” Ezra replied.

“Did the convoy leader say that?” Doug asked.

“They never say that, but no one’s movin’, and there’s no reason to stop here unless there’s trouble up ahead. If there’s any trouble between here and Grand Island, I’d bet we’re here for the night.”

“Weather sure went downhill,” Doug said. “Do you make this run often?”

“Six days a week for three and a half months. Seen enough of this road to last a lifetime.”

“Exiting at Eighty Three South. Stay in queue and park as directed,” the convoy leader directed on the radio.

“And there you are,” Ezra said. “Hope you brought a book or two to read. We’re restricted to the truck stop area, or whatever they designate as a truck park. No one leaves their truck until we get the say-so.”

For twenty minutes, the convoy crawled along Interstate Eighty, barely moving toward the interchange. Finally, the hundred-truck convoy parked in a huge, graveled parking area a half-block from a local truck stop.

“One through twenty, clear to exit. Back in thirty, no exceptions,” the radio stated.

“That’s us. We’re nineteen, in case you didn’t know,” Ezra said.

“But we’re something like thirty-third in line, aren’t we?” Doug asked.

“Yep. Doesn’t matter where we are in line, though. Too much to keep track of in a convoy.”

Doug pulled a rain shell from his pack, along with a baseball cap, and climbed down from the cab, following Ezra in his ‘Hempstead Limited’ jacket. The convoy security teams had deployed and cordoned off the truck park. Doug casually noted five men with rifles, looking out through the grey rain at the small town of North Platte.

“This happen often?” Doug asked. “Sorry I ask so many questions, by the way. Trying to learn what it’s like out of the city.”

“Often enough. Haven’t had a clean run to the east in four weeks, maybe five. South’a here snipers are taking out solo drivers. Gets worse the farther from the big cities you go. So we convoy, those lead trucks usually are armored up. Glass, steel plate, run-flat tires. The security boys run up ahead, see if there are any traps on bridges or overpasses,” Hempstead explained as they crossed the street toward the truck stop restaurant.

“More trouble away from the cities? I don’t get it,” Doug said.

“Seems wrong, doesn’t it?” Ezra explained. “Used to be the other way around. Cities have been, well, I guess you’d call it ‘pacified.’ Anyone gettin’ near a convoy highway is pretty much fair game for security. Gangs and such that used to mob a convoy pretty much been killed off by now. But out here, I figure it’s the loners. They got nothin’ left, so they figure to score a truckload of food or somethin’. Small towns like this’n have some real problems. Can’t hardly feed themselves. You’ll see what I mean, inside,” Ezra said as he opened the door.

The restaurant was nearly deserted except for the truckers and a few security men, who were looking out the windows and manning the doors. Two men, obviously with the security detail, hauled in two locking trunks, popped the latches, and started handing out sandwiches and pouring coffee from a large, insulated container. A man and woman, Doug guessed they were the cook and a waitress, stood and watched from behind the lunch counter. The menu items, displayed above the counter on a backlit plastic panel, were nearly all crossed out with a black line. All of the prices had been removed, he noted.

“You oughta hit the can while you got time,” Ezra said. “One thing you should learn is to take every opportunity. Can’t stop on the road. I’ll get you a sandwich and some coffee.”

“OK,” Doug said.

“One more thing. No talkin’ to the locals,” Hempstead told Doug. “Doesn’t pay to stir the pot.”

Distance, Chapter 54

2013-09-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

Monday morning,

September Eleventh

6:05 a.m.

Regent Plaza, Denver

Doug rose at five-thirty, eager to put his last day behind him and plan his return to Julie. His FDA routine included visits to the employee gym buried inside the Regent Plaza building, one of the few shared facilities used both by Federal employees and Regent Denver staff. Doug knew that this was one of the information interchange points within the Regent sphere of influence…a casual conversation while working out could easily turn into a goldmine of information for all parties involved. Through his months of service in Denver, Doug had been approached a number of times, and had remained coolly professional, not betraying any information on any FDA program, nor any of his corporate history with Regent. His role-playing, if perceived as intended, gave Doug the image of the straight shooter who was above petty influence peddling.

Stepping onto one of the fifteen treadmills, Doug punched in his preferred program, a ten mile run over varying terrain, mapped on the small flat panel display in front of him, and interactive, providing him a ‘view’ of upcoming terrain. A half-mile into his run, another runner joined him on the next treadmill, a deliberate move, since so many treadmills were open.

“You’re Peterson, aren’t you?” the man next to him asked.

“Yes. Doug Peterson,” Doug replied, not interrupting his breathing pattern.

“Davis Blankenship. We spoke last spring,” the man replied. Doug stopped his treadmill. Blankenship was imposing, probably in his mid fifties, around six-four, probably a little over two hundred pounds, and appeared to be ready to run a marathon or go mountain climbing. No paunch, no flab, drill-like eyes. Doug noted that several people on adjacent machines moved away from them.

“V.P. Operations, right?” Doug asked, knowing that the Regent executive would appreciate the recognition. He recalled his research on Blankenship, completed months before, along with every other director and executive he could identify. Research was everything in sales, Doug knew. He had to know the players, and long ago, he’d made it a point to know everything he could about both the players and the playing field.

“Correct. I understand you’re leaving the FDA as part of the latest changing of the guard. Is that true?”

“The new director is making changes, wholesale. I however, had already submitted my letter of resignation. My wife is expecting and has had some complications,” Doug replied.

“I’ve seen your resignation letter,” Blankenship replied, “Along with the earlier letter of course, from your wife.”

Regent had done their research as well.

“Things are well underway, sir. I think the Regent Performance objectives will be achieved, without my influence at the FDA or within Regent,” Doug said quietly. They were now alone in their quarter of the exercise floor.

“The Company’s objectives are complex and far-reaching. There is still substantial work ahead,” Blankenship said, not quite completely dismissing Doug’s unspoken notice of resignation. “There is a position waiting for you at the distribution center in Columbus. I understand that you’re leaving the FDA today. The Chairman and I expect you to be in Columbus by the end of tomorrow. There’s no possibility of staying in Denver of course. Can’t have you jump from Federal to private employ and stay in the same building, especially if the director wants you out.”

“I understand the offer but I really do have pressing needs to be with my family,” Doug replied.

“You apparently don’t understand,” Blankenship said quietly but forcefully, head lowered as he looked at Doug intently. “This isn’t an offer. You will arrive in Columbus, and you will undergo a thorough debrief on your time with the current administration. At that time, your status with the Company will be reviewed. Your compensation package of course, is dependent on this,” the older man stated, in a threatening tone.

Doug heard, ‘Your life depends on this.’ He was fuming.

“As the Company brought you to Denver, the Company will also relocate you. By nine a.m. tomorrow morning, your belongings will be loaded up for shipment on one of our transports. You’ll be on that transport. Understood?”

“I’ll go to Columbus, but after that I’m gone,” Doug replied, ice in his voice, leaning toward Blankenship, speaking quietly. He was about ready to deck the larger man. “Do you understand? Do you know what I know? Do you know what protections I’ve put in place for my family and myself? Do you know who gets the information, how many copies of it there are, and how many sources I have? How about your family, Davis? Your wife Barbara. Still at the place in the Hamptons, or is she up at Telluride? Your son Patrick. Still at Columbia, right? Molecular neurobiology? Tragic loss of your stepdaughter of course. My condolences.”

The Blankenship’s had lost twenty-one year-old Anne Marie in Paris in the Muslim takeover; the girl had suffered a very public death. Blankenship looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. His jaw muscles were bulging as he clenched his jaw, but he remained silent.

“I didn’t get walk into this job without leaving myself an exit path, Mister Blankenship. Unless I make certain contacts at specific times, the information I have goes viral. So it pays to leave me be,” Doug said with a slight smile, nodding to another FDA employee taking a seat on a spinning machine. Other Federal employees were moving in as well, hitting up the elliptical trainer, carrying their coffees and vitamin waters. “I’m sure of course, that you have similar measures in place?” Doug continued, getting back on the treadmill. “What I know stays with me, and I will protect that information as long as I deem it necessary to do so. It’s not for sale; it’s not for trade. It is solely my insurance policy.”

“You’re on the plane in the morning. You miss it and the consequences will be unfortunate,” Blankenship said.

“Might be unfortunate all around,” Doug replied, pausing for a moment. “Don’t worry. I’ll be on the plane.”

8:10 a.m.

Doug wrapped up his morning briefing with Dena, outlining his final day with the FDA, while his mind was preoccupied with Regent. The majority of his day would be to summarize the work of the past few months and progress with vendors and commercial plants within Doug’s area of operations. The last hour or two would be meeting with an untrained, uneducated former transportation coordinator from the late Leinhardt National by the name of Karl Shearson.

Courtesy of Dena, Doug had a full dossier on Shearson, a thirty-one year old former truck driver, who had moved up inside Leinhardt solely it appeared, through ass-kissing his superiors. Eighteen months at Ohio State, one point nine grade point average, apparently majoring in partying, succeeding in getting kicked out of the lowest ranked fraternity on campus. His father Gustav however, served thirty-nine years on the Leinhardt board of directors, ensuring a fallback for young Karl.

Dena would be busy doing actual work. Shearson would likely spend most of his time at The Mile, drinking and losing his Federal wages to hookers.

5:25 p.m.

Shearson showed up at four forty-five, introduced himself, sized up the office, thanked Doug for his service, and was abruptly gone…leaving both Doug and Dena with the same impression: ‘The guy’s a dolt.’

Dena had left a few minutes after five, wishing Doug the best in his new life outside of Denver. Doug thought there was a tinge of wistfulness in Dena’s voice, perhaps wishing she were able to leave as well.

After she’d left, he tried to log into a few of the Federal websites that had been available to him during his time in Denver. He soon found them either non-responsive or requiring special login names or passwords, which of course were different than his ‘regular’ login.

Information passing through the Federal computer system was now completely unavailable to anyone without the proper authentication—even including weather forecasts and general departmental information. With pre-War Internet service a distant memory, the only information available on what remained of the Web was thoroughly approved by the Federal Government long before it was released to the public. A few minutes after Dena had left the office, Doug’s desk phone rang.

“Doug Peterson,” he answered.

“Mister Peterson, this is Information Security Services. We’re noticing some unusual activity on your computer,” the male voice asked.

“Well, I was trying to get to a number of pages and I find they’re all requiring new login information. My regular login doesn’t seem to work.”

“Sorry, sir. Your login information and general access has been restricted as of nine a.m. this morning,” the voice said. “As of five thirty p.m. tonight, your connection will be deactivated.”

“Oh. Gotcha. I guess I didn’t put two and two together.”

“Sir, violation of computer network security protocols is a very serious matter.”

“Yes, I understand. I didn’t think that…” Doug started.

“Sir, your building access will be deactivated by six p.m. this evening. If you have not logged out at the security desk by that time, you will be subject to arrest. Do you have any need of assistance?”

“No. I’ll be leaving shortly,” Doug replied, deliberately sounding tired and defeated. He hung up the phone.

“Well, shit,” Doug said to no one. He packed up the last few things that he wanted to take along, including his leather portfolio, his favorite mug, and a couple of worn novels that he’d used more as props than as reading material, and put them in the file box that Dena had provided him. “Time to go.”

A few minutes later, Doug stood at the security desk in the lobby, a space enclosed in ballistic glass and staffed by unsmiling, humorless men. Doug was required to sign five separate non-disclosure agreements, after being electronically fingerprinted, photographed, and searched for any Federal materials.

His old Palm PDA was opened, turned on and reviewed briefly, but not docked or checked for any files that might’ve been secreted away. Any attempt to dock the antique would’ve triggered a security breach, as would any flash drive that didn’t include the requisite Federal security software. There weren’t any files that he’d take with him in any regard—everything he’d learned was still in his head. Security invalidated Doug’s electronic log in, but let him keep the ID badge, which he didn’t quite understand.

By six p.m., Doug was at his apartment, where he found a notice from ‘Preferred Shipping Service’, confirming that they would arrive by seven a.m. the following day to ‘expedite your move.’

“Not wasting any time, are we?” he said again to no one, plugging in his PDA to charge. The refrigerator held no useable food, although the freezer had a few edibles remaining. He drank one of the last three beers while re-packing his travel bags, changed into casual wear, and headed across the street to ‘Mothers’, another of the Federally-dependent restaurants that catered to workers housed in the Zone.

The shapely hostess seated him in a cozy booth in the noisy bar, where he was almost immediately served complimentary appetizers and bottled water, as his cocktail was crafted without question. He’d ordered a complicated version of a Manhattan, just to see if they could indeed create it. Within minutes, the drink, called a Fourth Regiment, served straight up, was on his table. He sampled it, having had it only once before in New York years before.

“This is perfect,” he said to the young waitress.

“Glad to hear that, sir. I hadn’t heard of that particular creation. Are you here for dinner this evening?”

“Yes. Last night here, actually,” Doug said, having another sip.

“Well, I thank you for joining us! Our specials this evening are seared veal tenderloin, which is served with a chestnut maple puree, caramelized cauliflower and grilled chanterelles; a dry aged porterhouse steak with baked potato and blue cheese, sautéed mushrooms and broccoli; and finally from New England, a fresh four pound broiled lobster, served with fresh sautéed golden potatoes, green beans in browned butter and shallots. Here’s the regular menu, if those don’t suit,” she said, handing him the thick leather menu.

“Thanks. I’ll take a look,” Doug replied with a smile.

‘Ninety-nine percent of the population would be rioting if they knew this place existed and was charging ahead as if nothing was wrong,’ he thought to himself. The prices on the menu were all in inflated dollars, but also listed in gold, he noted. His cocktail alone would likely be over twenty dollars gold, given the prices in the Zone.

The television programs, from what Doug could hear and see, appeared to a continuous series of optimistic—and fictional—tales of the Recovery, of the successes of the Federal relief programs, and bios of those men and women on the ground making it all possible. A zenith of propaganda, there was nary a word of what might pass for ‘news’ in any respect, and certainly nothing of any troubles with the New Republic.

Without being obvious, Doug studied the assemblage at ‘Mothers’. To the right, several Federal employees were engaged in overly intimate conversations with members of their own gender, which Doug noted without judgment; to the left, another group of overly well-dressed Federal workers were deep in the midst of negotiations with each other, or with persons of negotiable virtue who were overly pretty or overly handsome, and clearly not Federal employees. Unlike The Mile, there was no pole dancing, and the security staff here wore better suits, although they were clearly armed under tailored jackets.

‘Just another meat-market’, Doug thought to himself. ‘At least the food is worth the screwing I’ll get.’

“Have you decided, sir?” the waitress asked, bringing Doug back to reality.

“The lobster, if you would,” Doug said, maintaining his FDA/Regent persona. He was actually more interested in a four cheese pasta with smoked bacon, but that choice would’ve been seriously out of character. “And, another of these,” he said, raising the remains of his cocktail.

“Absolutely. Right away, sir,” the waitress said with a slight bow. Doug noticed that she’d unbuttoned two buttons on her blouse since she’d been at his table last.

‘Not interested, young lady,’ Doug thought. ‘Tomorrow, Columbus. What the Hell is that going to be like? How do I get out of that snare?’

From the research that Doug had completed prior to joining the company, the Regent distribution center was an cluster of buildings near the Port Columbus Airport, an unimpressive massing of warehouses with a sprinkling of modest offices nearby—he’d seen it from the airport, but never visited it. The Columbus Data Center was located to their downtown headquarters, both highly secure buildings before things started coming apart. He was sure that they’d be fortresses by now. ‘What do they have in mind for me?’ he thought, his second cocktail arriving, again perfect in its’ creation.

“A rare creation,” a much older man stated, standing near Doug’s table. The man was wearing clothing perhaps too casual for the restaurants in the heart of the Zone, and yet still conveyed a sense of both wealth and…something else. “May I join you?”

“Well, sure, I guess,” Doug said, falling a bit out of character. “I’m Doug…” the man raised his hand, stopping Doug cold.

“No names needed or desired. It is often better not to know,” the man said, taking off the long, brown leather coat and seating himself across the polished mahogany table. The man wore black slacks, a black Oxford shirt, and a black sweater, in contrast with white hair gathered in a ponytail, and piercing blue eyes set in a weathered face. “You are pondering your next move?” The man asked, motioning to the waitress to deliver another Fourth Regiment to the table.

Doug sat there, not speaking, for several seconds longer than he realized, wondering who this stranger was, so at ease across from him.

“We are all pondering this. Perhaps your decisions are of the immediate. Many here tonight cannot see beyond the conquest of the next few hours, yes?” the man said, a hint of some European accent coming to light.

“Probably correct,” Doug said. “Yeah, I have some things in front of me.”

“But not within Denver. You aren’t playing the game of the others, so therefore your mind is elsewhere, racing ahead,” the man said, his cocktail arriving, along with a menu. He dispatched the waitress with a simple order of the four-cheese pasta dish. “And so you are alone. I am on a similar path, this may be the last time I am in a great city.”

“What is your work? What do you do?” Doug asked.

“I once ran a business. Banking, venture capital, international finance, leveraged buy-outs, mergers. After thirty years, there was no joy or satisfaction. There was nothing but sameness, and in the end, regret. One day, I woke up. My wife had long since left me, my children estranged, there was no reconciliation…too much had happened. More importantly, there was just emptiness in my life. I changed.”

“Just like that,” Doug asked.

“Certainly not. I embarked on a journey, perhaps as you are about to start, as I continue to be changed by my own days.”

“And where does the journey take you?” Doug asked, intrigued.

“The outskirts of small town in an out of the way place. With the providence of the Creator, my work is there. It has been there for quite some time now. My work is similar to that of a monastery in the Dark Ages,” the man said, leaning back against the thick cushions.

“Oh, so you’re a religious man,” Doug said.

“Not particularly. My work is more scholarly,” the man said, sipping his cocktail. “This really is a remarkable thing,” he said reflecting. “It is a shame these will not be possible soon.”

“I’m sorry? I don’t understand,” Doug said.

“For twenty five years, or perhaps more, it has been apparent to me that these times are coming,” the man said, waving his hand toward the crowd. “From the days when ‘moral relativism’ was first mentioned, to the covert corruption that soon went overt; the cancer of government programs and entitlements and blowing up the money; to the inevitable connections between my old world of finance and the realm of sponsored terrorism, brush wars and the losses of freedoms…then on to full-scale surveillance of all, everywhere, and always. It is of course natural that the boogeymen have been found everywhere the government looks, but the government never looks hard enough inside itself or its’ closest allies. The people are powerless to stop it…or so they believe within the constant state of fear. This is a society that kills the unborn and warehouses the old, shutting away the life-experiences that could be so very educational. A society that lies to itself about consequences of daily decisions; foregoing the difficult for the convenient, but soon to find them ruinous. So we are all criminals and prisoners, everywhere and always, until everything of the old collapses and the criminals are brought to justice. The convictions are coming.”

“That’s not happening anytime soon,” Doug said quietly.

“It is a cycle that has happened dozens of times over civilized history and probably dozens of times more in pre-recorded history, again lessons lost in time. It is entirely natural, from its’ onset to its’ conclusion,” the man said. “It is the struggle of generations upon generations, and from my studies of history, which without intending to boast are extensive. We are in the closing act of this particular play,” the man said, looking at the crowd as if one were looking at a museum display. “The convictions that I speak of are both natural and those led by mankind. My work seeks to preserve that which should be preserved, document which will be needed, and be a repository for a point when the next Dark Age ends,” he said, looking at Doug with his clear, blue eyes. “There are debts to be paid to the future children in the lessons we have learned. We hope to help see them paid.”

“You think that’s where it goes next?” Doug asked, looking afresh at the room around him. “The Dark Ages?”

“With automatic weapons and a clash of cultures, yes. It is a swing of a pendulum that is decades, or even centuries in coming. The words ‘epic change’ are appropriate. That outcome is one of many that are possible. Some are more dire than others, and so we prepare.”

“We?” Doug asked.

“A group of men and women, who I work with,” the man said, as their dinners arrived simultaneously. “But your journey takes you elsewhere. An uncertain future, I think.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” Doug said. “I have to ask this, but you seem to be reading me like a book. I hope what is on my mind is not that clearly shown on my face.”

“It is in your eyes, not on your face, and no, it is not particularly clear to the casual observer. I am not, however, a casual observer, which alone is why I am at this table. Another observation, if you don’t mind,” the older man said, taking a spoonful of the pasta dish as Doug took a bite of his own dinner.

“Sure,” Doug said. “In for a dime.”

“Oh, this is much more valuable than the dime or what passes for a dollar these days,” the man said, savoring the simple dinner. “Your presence here at this time tells me a great deal. Perhaps you do not recognize the peril? I am curious as to why you remain in the heart of the darkness that is this place?”

Doug stopped for a moment, taking a drink of the iced water provided. “I have my own work to do, that is more than what it might seem, and I do recognize the peril.”

“And yet you are still here, on the eve of destruction,” the older man said with cool forcefulness in his voice.

“Not for long,” Doug said. “I leave here soon.”

“I’m making my point badly,” the man said, leaning back and looking at the food in front of them. “You are still engaged in a system that you know is failing. You are not in a hidden corner of a state, out of the way of the blast wave. You stand on the sidewalk, waiting for the flash of the explosion. Why?”

“My own journey happens to be about slowing down slavery, to be perfectly honest,” Doug said.

“Ah, our enemies within,” the man said, lowering his chin a little, and taking another bite. “We’ve heard of this. In the food, yes?”

Doug was stunned into silence, and only after realizing he hadn’t moved in nearly a full minute, he took a bite of the lobster, not tasting it.

“Do not be shocked, young man. There are many voices in the storm, but few ears to hear. This has been known to us for several years now, but we didn’t know it had been implemented until several months ago.”

“I’m not sure I should say anything here,” Doug said, feeling very uneasy.

“A series of food and beverage combinations, when combined in the correct ratio and with the correct component parts, creates alterations in the mind of the consumer, rendering them highly suggestive to authority, capable of performing normally unspeakable acts, able and willing to serve their masters. There are worse elements in play in the current environment, young man. Perhaps one of the more disturbing characteristics of this alteration, is that there is no research on reversing the effects,” the man said, continuing to eat, now nearly finished, and mopping up the remaining sauce with bread torn from a small loaf, taken from a basket on the table.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Doug said.

“Another danger that lurks in plain sight, are the choices we have. Assuming you are of Federal employ, do you know your President? Do you know your Vice President? I don’t mean personally, but do you know or suspect their intents? Or of this New Republic?” the man asked, eyebrows slightly raised.

“Not really. I mean, we just know what is on the news and of course from their campaigns. Information on the New Republic is at best distorted, but even the distortions are cryptic,” Doug said, nearing the end of his own meal.”

“There is much more at risk for the future within the offices of the elected, both here in Denver and within the New Republic, than meets the eye. The leaders are truly the product of the generations, the ultimate representation of the faults of the culture. You should be very, very cautious,” the man said, rising and taking his coat. “This lovely dinner is on me, young man. I hope that you have a fulfilling life, pursued in happiness,” he said, leaving a small leather satchel of coins on the table. The man turned to go, looked over his shoulder at Doug for a moment, nodded and left. The waitress returned to check on dessert for Doug’s table, and saw the weathered satchel.

“My guest has just bought dinner, it appears,” Doug said to the waitress, as she picked up the soft bag and looking inside.

“This is for the tab? That’s more than I make in a month,” she said, trying to remain composed.

“He left a generous tip,” Doug said to her, gathering his own jacket and taking the last loaf of bread from the table. “A very generous tip.”

Distance, Chapter 53

2013-08-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning,

September tenth

7:40 a.m.

Des Moines International Airport

Doug stood in the security line, a few spare moments after leaving Julie in tears at the curb. They’d been up nearly all night, talking about his return home; the new life they’d soon be starting; their baby, due in February. The drive in to Des Moines was a family affair, with Peter driving the big crew cab farm truck, Arie in riding shotgun (literally) and Doug and Julie in the back. They’d head over Mount Pleasant from Des Moines after dropping him off.

Dressed in pressed slacks, black Oxford shirt and a dark sportcoat, Doug also carried a black, combat style backpack as his carry-on, and a small matching bag containing his essentials. The remaining bags he’d brought on the trip East stayed at the Farm.

Security at the airport was far tighter than anything Doug had seen in any of his travels, including the Federal Zone in Denver. Black-clad helmeted men carried short, stubby guns Doug recognized as the Heckler & Koch MP-5. He’d trained on one briefly with Kevin Martinez. All of the men had helmet visors down, but were scanning the dozen or so passengers in the departure area.

Screening was a complete search of all of his bags; a strip search down to his underwear; and an interrogation worthy of a clandestine agency that really didn’t care if you were alive at the end of the day…while remaining in his underwear in a chilly room.

While being searched, Doug’s ID was logged into the Federal database and quickly compared to his known and expected travel patterns, his biometric signature, and three-dimensional photograph. While in the interrogation area (he couldn’t continue to think of it as a ‘screening’ area any longer), his voice was compared to known voice prints of Douglas Michael Peterson, USFDA number 31668471SADREZ.

Once through the interrogation process, Doug re-dressed and found himself in a now-windowless terminal area. All of the large glass windows were now covered with black plywood, and half of the lights were shut off. It was not possible to know night from day in the terminal area.

The terminal staff were no longer the typical tired-looking flight attendants and ticket agents, but more black-clad security personnel; these were still wearing body armor, but had shed the visored Kevlar helmets and machine pistols. Most of the seating had been removed from the terminal, with the remaining seating limited to two straight rows of chairs, facing each other. The rest of the chairs were piled up against the shuttered coffee stand. His fellow passengers—he assumed were all heading for Denver—universally were looking down at the floor or pretending to be comfortable with the situation. Of the now thirty or so people, Doug seemed to be the most at ease and relaxed. With only five minutes to boarding time, he activated his Palm V and played chess, finishing the winning effort on the third level. The Palm was now in ‘ping mode’.

The climb-out was extraordinarily bumpy, but the mostly empty Boeing 737 soon settled into cruising altitude at thirty-thousand feet…according to the flight deck; the window shades were sealed shut. As far as Doug knew, they could be flying anywhere. Two hours would tell the tale—the flight should only take a hour and forty-five minutes. There was no in-flight service of any kind; indeed, there were no stewards whatsoever. Doug put his Palm away, after briefly playing an unnecessary game of chess, and soon drifted off to sleep.

Doug was roughly awakened as the plane entered a steep descent. He’d first thought that the aircraft was in trouble, but one of the other passengers across the aisle told him that they were probably in a quick descent due to severe thunderstorms in the area. The plane was also circling tightly to the left; spiraling down to Denver International. Ten minutes or so of this, and the plane quickly leveled and almost immediately touched down, braking hard moments later.

“Good God,” Doug said. “What the Hell was that?”

“What’s the matter, buddy? Never visited Baghdad back in the day?” a thuggish-looking man in the row behind Doug said, with a grin. “Standard procedure where you don’t want to get shot down.”

“Why would anyone want to shoot down an airliner?” Doug asked before he could consider his own question.

“Why indeed,” the man said, leaning his head back and smiling as if at an inside joke. The plane slowed further, apparently approaching the gate. Exiting the plane, Doug could see there were no threats of thunderstorms. Looking to the east, the sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless, perfect.

Denver International’s best days were clearly in the past. The passenger areas were dim at best, again with only a fraction of the lights turned on. Like Des Moines, all the windows to the outside had been covered, and the black-clad ‘security’ people were evenly spaced throughout the entire terminal. The main concourse had been heavily modified since Doug was there last…only ten days before. Black plywood walls had been thrown up, cattle-chute style, greatly limiting the flow of passengers through the large, once-grand space. More armed security peered down at the chute from elevated platforms as the arrivals made their way to the exit doors.

Instead of the limousine or upfitted Cadillac that Doug expected for Federal arrivals, a single bus sat at the curb, with five armed men watching the empty ramps and the distant horizon.

“Federal Zone, sir?” the driver asked, standing at the front of the bus.

“Yes. Regent Plaza,” Doug said casually. The driver raised his eyebrows, just enough for Doug to notice, and then hid his apparent surprise.

“Right away, sir,” he said to Doug, who’d been near the front of the queue for the bus. He sat in the row behind the driver.

Within a few minutes, the rest of the arriving passengers had boarded, and the bus eased away from the curb. Doug noticed that the glass appeared distorted…just as it had on his armored company SUV.

“Excuse me, driver? Is this bus armored?” Doug asked quietly.

“Yes, sir. After last week, well, we had to take steps,” the driver replied. Doug noticed at that moment the two Army Humvees pulling out to escort the bus.

“I’m sorry. Last week? I’ve been, well, incommunicado.”

“Sir, I’m really not supposed to discuss it. I’m sure you understand,” the driver replied, looking at Doug for a moment in the rear view mirror.

“Sure. No problem,” Doug said, leaning back in his seat. Within another mile, he could see the obvious burn marks on an overpass and on the pavement, where vehicles had probably been attacked. A large rental car complex north of Pena Boulevard was a burned-out wreck. It had been intact ten days before. Doug noticed smoke rising from several points in the suburbs on the clear, windless day.

Arriving at the Zone forty-five minutes later, the passengers were asked to disembark and proceed through screening. This too was new to Doug, and all of his bags were searched again.

No civilian-type vehicles were present in the Zone—and anyone entering had to get to their destinations on foot, Doug was an exception. As soon as he presented his ID and stated his destination, he was escorted to an electric shuttle, and immediately driven to Regent Plaza, without a word.

Security at Regent Plaza was by comparison, normal. Doug swiped in with his Federal I.D. card, and a voice greeted him through the automated reader on the security panel, directing him to his ‘new office location’ on the forty-sixth floor. He rode alone in the elevator to his new office, three floors above his former location.

He didn’t recognize anyone on his new floor, but was escorted to his office by a very uptight, buttoned down young man.

“Mister Peterson, there is a morning briefing on your desktop computer, and Deputy Director Hollander would like a word with you late this afternoon. Dena, your administrative executive, will confirm available times with the Deputy Directors’ office.”

“Many thanks. Things have really changed around here,” Doug said.

The young man nodded, in a bow, and made his exit silently.

Doug’s new office was larger, with a view to the north rather than the west. The furnishings were of a far better quality than his former office, which weren’t anything to sneeze at. Putting down his bags, he noticed that he had a private bath and a wet bar, fully stocked. He settled into his desk and logged into the network to retrieve his messages and read the current daily brief, and catch up on the past ten days. A moment later, a soft knock on the door interrupted him.

“Mister Peterson? I’m Dena Sampson, your administrative executive. Is there anything you need to settle in?” Doug stood as she entered.

“Good to meet you, Dena. Call me Doug if you would,” he said, slipping back into the FDA persona.

“Certainly,” she replied. Doug could tell this one was all business. “The Deputy Director would like to meet with you at four-fifteen.”

“I see that we have today’s briefing, but I was hoping to be able to catch up on the past ten days. There don’t appear to be any prior editions available. Can you pull them up and forward them to me?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but they’ve been purged. They’re purged daily now,” she said coolly. Doug hid his surprise, going all ‘corporate’.

“OK. I’ve been in the wilds of Iowa for the past ten days. Tell me what the Hell has been going on here, if you would. Starting with the upgraded security protocols from here to yon; why I can’t get a private car to pick me up at the airport; and what happened at DIA. There’s a few million dollars in burned buildings out there.”

“Let me get you a cup of coffee,” Dena said, seemingly preparing herself as well, closing the door to the office. She poured Doug a mug, added cream and two sugars, which is how Doug built his coffee at the FDA, but not in ‘real life.’

“You know how I take my coffee?”

“It is part of my responsibilities,” she replied. “Now, about the last ten days. You’ve heard about the New Republic of course?”

“Certainly,” Doug said, “Pesky problem.”

“It’s worse than pesky. Undersecretary Sather was assassinated while returning from Denver International when a car bomb went off. That might be some of the damage you saw. Director Davis, who I don’t believe you met—he was appointed on the day you left—was left permanently incapacitated after an incident at a country club.”

“Incident?” Doug asked with raised eyebrows.

“It appears that he was attacked, with a foreign substance injected directly into his neck. He has permanent brain damage. He will likely not survive the month.”

“What happened to Director Simonson? He’d only been on the job since the first of July.”

“He was asked to resign by the President. He did so immediately, and left Denver. The last I heard he was in Austin.”

“OK, so that’s a shake up in our department. That hardly seems…”

“There were other incidents. Four members of the Presidents’ Cabinet have disappeared in the past seven days. Off the map, off the grid, families and all. The Security Service personnel guarding them disappeared as well. Significant amounts of blood were found in three of the four residences, and matched family members and Security personnel.”

“There has not been a word of this…”

“Of course not. If America knew that the New Republic was assassinating Cabinet level leaders, the government would collapse. The President needs to keep control of the situation.”

‘Control? Someone’s delusional,’ he thought to himself. “The briefs? Why are they purged?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Dena replied.

“How much do you know about me? Do you know that I’ve already sent in my letter of resignation?” Doug asked.

“I had heard. I didn’t know that was confirmed until just now,” she answered.

“My wife is expecting. This is our first,” Doug said. “I don’t want to miss anything, naturally, and there have been complications.”

“I understand. When is your last day?”

“I sent it to the Director on September sixth, effective September thirty,” Doug replied.

“Well, I will do my best for you while you’re here. Do you have any questions?”

“Just one. Why was my office moved up here? And where are my things—sorry, two questions.”

“There was a minor fire on that floor. Quite a bit of smoke damage, which is being cleaned up, but a lot of personal items were damaged due to water. No one was hurt though. They figured an electrical circuit to a computer was overloaded.”

“Oh. OK. Fair enough,” Doug said, immediately suspecting more than an electrical fire. “I’ll get caught up and let you know if I need anything.”

“I’ll set up a late lunch for you if you like. The daily menu should be in your inbox.”

“That’d be great, thanks. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

Doug dove deeply into the FDA correspondence right after ordering a simple lunch. The digital ‘paper trail’ was a treasure trove of information on the events of the past week and a half. While specific tasks, especially with regards to food distribution, were high-priority, almost universally they were falling behind on quotas due to ‘delivery problems’ and ‘increasing issues within the distribution infrastructure’.

He was pleased to see that without much exception, the resistance in the West to accept RNEW products was holding fast, but alarmed at the projection that by the end of the calendar year, commercial food production and distribution would be a fraction of the previous calendar years’ product. Dena brought lunch in, as he was studying the already-understood failures that were looming in the immediate future. The pastrami on rye sandwich sat untouched.

At least ninety-five percent of the population depended on commercial farms—and they had failed, despite Federal intervention in providing fuel, seeds, petrochemicals. Nothing would stop it now. People in the United States of America were going to starve, starting in the Northeast, then the Great Lakes cities, progressing into the south and then moving west. The impact of the New Republic would be felt almost immediately, as most shipping to the Northeast had already been drastically curtailed. By the end of September, the dominoes would begin to fall.

Depressed, he looked next at the department organization matrix, compared to a stored version that he had within his own desktop folder. Doug knew that nearly ninety percent of the department heads were ‘new’ in the past year; but more alarmingly, almost half of those had been replaced within the past week. This had to be more than a ‘policy change’, he thought, leaning back in his chair.

Further study of the org chart showed that eight of the ten liaisons—Doug’s level—had also been replaced. Doug didn’t know any of the names, either from Regent or from any prior assignments with the FDA. None of the current occupants of the organization chart had any bios, and he found his own had been removed. He had no idea if the people in his division were ‘enemies’, ‘friends’ or ‘non-combatants.’

The only option therefore, was to treat all as ‘friends’…but regard them as ‘enemies.’ He finally ate his sandwich, staring blankly at the computer screen.

“Mister Peterson?” Dena asked via intercom. “Deputy Director Hollander is here, sir.”

“Here?” Doug asked, checking the time. It was just four-fifteen. “I’ll be right out.”

“Doug? Good to meet you,” the Deputy Director said as Doug left his office. “Call me Terry. Grab your jacket. Let’s take a walk.”

“Sure- Good to meet you,” he said. “I’ll grab my coat.” Doug was caught completely off-guard. Terry Hollander looked to be in his early forties, with salt-and-pepper hair and piercing blue eyes. Doug’s immediate impression was that Hollander was too young to be in a Deputy Director position, but these were strange days.

“Miss Sampson, I’ll have Doug back in an hour or so,” Hollander said.

“Very well, Director. Thank you,” Dena replied with a smile.

Within a few minutes, they’d left Regent Plaza and were walking south toward the classically designed Civic Center Park, making small-talk along the way. The park, once a showpiece of green grass and ornamental plantings, was now a bitter brown, with a handful of patches of garden space, a Federal effort to recreate a ‘Victory Garden’ atmosphere. The gardens were filled with weeds, untended, barely watered, and a perfect reflection of the unfolding failures.

“Thanks for meeting, Doug. I wanted to get out of the office for this conversation,” the Deputy Director began.

“Glad to oblige. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”

“I’ve reviewed your letter of resignation, and it’s accepted. Your work for the Department has been exemplary, and it’s been noticed. Years working in the industry, solid, with one company, and then a major change to a much smaller, much more aggressive company. Are you planning on returning to Regent?”

“No, I don’t think so, sir,” Doug replied. “My wife is expecting, and I’d like a change of pace to a quieter life.”

“I understand. I’m originally from a quiet corner of Ohio. Probably no going back now though,” Hollander said, sitting on a bench facing the City-County building, with the Capital building behind them. “You’ve read the projections for the coming year?”

“Yes,” Doug replied.

“It’s coming apart. There isn’t any denying it, although the President is doing his best at just that. It’s all sweetness and glory and the best days are still ahead, and it’s all bullshit. I’m giving everyone the option to leave Federal service at their request; I’m sure you’ve seen the extraordinary numbers of new appointees in the past ten days?”

Doug was surprised at the frank conversation. “Of course. I thought it might be house cleaning…new Director and all.”

“It’s being marketed that way, and there is no shortage of eager ladder-climbers to take the place of those that have elected to leave the FDA, regardless of the dim future,” Hollander said, stretching his legs out in front of him, looking as relaxed as he could possibly be.

“Where did you come from—prior to the FDA?” Doug asked.

“Oh, let’s not go there. Let’s just say that I’ve been in governmental service for quite awhile,” Hollander replied. “Doug, what’s your plan for the next year? Are you ready?”

Doug was stunned. No one in Federal service, in Doug’s experience at least, had ever said aloud anything except optimism and the mantra that restoration of ‘before’ was the only possible outcome.

“I, uh, I’ve made plans. Given what I’ve experienced already, it seemed prudent,” Doug answered.

“Good for you. Count yourself in a very small minority.”

“Terry, given what you know, why are you still here?” Doug asked frankly.

“Mrs. Hollander works for the First Lady. My wife is a ladder-climber extraordinaire. Three administrations so far, moving up the social strata on the remains of anyone who gets in her way. So, in this particular role, in the past ten days, I’ve taken it upon myself to undertake some damage control in the hopes that competent people who are not complete political ass-hats make a smart choice and get the Hell out of the way of the coming hurricane,” Terry Hollander said, still leaning back on the bench, arms stretched out along the back, legs crossed at the ankle. “Question remains, are you one of them?”

“Yeah, I’m one of them.”

“Then you should make haste, Doug. Do you have a way to get out of Denver?”

“I have some resources,” he replied, counting on his Regent income and savings.

“Steer clear of the big cities, be where you need to be by the end of the month. How long do you need to wrap up your position?”

“Couple days,” Doug replied, realizing that he’d just been given his walking papers. “Do you have a replacement?”

“Oh yeah. Nephew of some White House staffer. Worked for the same company you did. Leinhardt? Is that right? Karl Shearson.”

“Yeah, that’s my old outfit. They went down for the final count I heard in July. Never heard of this Shearson.”

“Not surprised. He was in shipping, from what I gather from his resume.”

“He’ll then have absolutely no idea what he’s doing,” Doug said, with a warning tone.

“Correct. Which is why Dena Sampson will be doing most of the actual work. Her husband is on the staff of the White House chief of counsel. She’s trapped as well.”

“What happens when it comes apart? What happens to people like you and Dena?”

“The handful of us that can, will get out somehow.”

“How exactly? No gas. No cars. Picture it,” Doug said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, looking at the dried out grass and withered trees.

“I know. Might be afoot. Might be on a helicopter. We’ll make it or we won’t. Point is, you have options that others do not. Exercise them while they’re still available to you,” Hollander said with a wry smile. “Hopefully you’ll be around on the other side of this shitpile.”

Where ya been, Tom?

2013-08-15T22:51:00.001-07:00

Busy summer, to put it mildly. Running the company (six employees), balancing project commitments within hundreds of miles of home base plus a few off-shore obligations, spending some time with the kids as they're home from college, working on the garden, working on some construction work here at the house, church obligations...and a slew of medical appointments (nothing wrong at all--everything checked out this year is considered preventative maintenance done while we still have something that resembles first-world care). None of the aforementioned translates to more than about ten minutes of free time per day.

It's winding down a bit, writing will be more frequent starting in another couple of weeks as daughter returns to school, projects wind down for the fall, and some of the insanity of my schedule wraps up.

In my infrequent spare time (mostly while camping in western Montana, sitting in airport concourses, waiting in doctors' offices, but also occasionally during the wee hours after frequent thunderstorms), I've been reading through a couple of older books, including The Fourth Turning (which had been on my list for many years, as it was published in the mid 1990's). I'd advise you to pick up a copy and read the online information that you can find on the subject matter. The book, although older, has played out pretty much as the authors predicted, and in terms of 'preps', figure that you have less than two to ten years to a major war (meaning total, global war). I figure that we're on the lower end of that number. Figure, 2015.

Reading the generational archetypes (big words! yikes!) in that book, it was a little disturbing to see me described so well, as well as those on neighboring generational journeys. It'll help me in the future, work with my clients and folks around me, but there was some comfort in the mysterious ways that people 'act' and 'behave' over the generations. Now that that mystery has been stripped away, and I can see why people 'are' the way they are (within a certain framework at least),

A friend passed on some interesting links to Paul Craig Roberts' site today, including numerous illustrations of our current leadership (.gov, .mil, NGO's) gently guiding us into a confrontational stance with China. You won't find this in the standard media. You might find in in media sourced from the U.K., and while I used to regards PCR as a bit extreme, he's been spot on in his observations, despite my skepticism.

Read him. Prepare accordingly.

------

Years ago, when I had wrapped up 'Deep Winter' and was in the midst of 'Shatter', numerous events within the storylines played out in the real world. Over the years, it seems to readers more than myself sometimes, that this pattern continues--I don't really keep track. Events in 'Remnant' however, did in fact play out in the real world before I uploaded very similar events in the book, causing a major re-direct, changing the last half of that book. 'Distance' might see events happen in the real world not reflected in DW/SH/REM that I'll have to work around, we'll just have to see.

Seven more chapters to go in Distance, where we will see a little clearer from a higher vantage point, looking across a very difficult future.

TCS

Distance, Chapter 52

2013-06-16T21:23:00.002-07:00

Saturday afternoon,

September Ninth

2:40 p.m.

Hospital time, it is well known, is some of the slowest time that can pass.

Arriving at the hospital at half-past twelve, Molly was received and immediately assigned to an isolation unit. Most hospitals had created some sort of physical separation between ‘routine’ emergencies and respiratory patients—Mount Pleasant had done this as well, with a complete separation between the conventional emergency room and respiratory emergencies treated within a separate building. Doctor Jameson had met them within minutes of their arrival, and Doug found it odd that preferential treatment seemed to be given to the Seghers so easily. Doug waited until he and Julie could be alone to discuss it. Peter, Arie and Maria spoke with the doctor and his staff in a private room off of the waiting area, and Julie and Doug gave them some privacy.

“Jules, there’s one thing that bothered me here,” Doug said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“How is it that Molly is getting this….well, extraordinary treatment?”

“I’m not sure,” Julie replied. “I didn’t really think about it.”

“It’s just that…there were several people that appeared to be waiting, and Molly was ushered right in,” Doug said.

“Now that you mention it, there were other people,” Julie said. They had by now though, been taken through the glassed vestibule into the treatment area, Doug noted. A few new patients had taken their places in the waiting area. He’d activated the tracking program on the PDA, while they killed time.

By two o’clock, Doug was famished, and he knew that Julie’s ever-present pregnancy snacks wouldn’t hold out for long. With Peter, Arie and Maria now meeting with another doctor, Doug headed over to the main building to find a cafeteria. Within a few minutes, he found the long-closed cafeteria, but one of the staff gave him a photocopied menu for a local restaurant that was still in business and able to provide take out.

“Any luck?” Julie asked.

“No. But I’m happy to take orders,” Doug replied, handing her the menu.

“Take out? I haven’t had restaurant food in months,” Julie said, diving into the menu. A few minutes later, she’d marked several items, all of Asian theme.

Doug took orders from the Seghers as well, and drove the few blocks to the restaurant, noticing a sign for a National Guard center not far away. He took a little detour to get closer, in case the program in the Palm picked up anything, and then realized he could go inside to check email from Denver…that would have to wait until later of course. Doug found the restaurant and parked on the side, a little surprised to see a horse hitching post and a watering trough in a parking space.

Eddies had adapted from pre-War operations to the new reality of a collapsed economy, little in the way of recognizable money with actual value, and customers who could actually afford to pay. There were ten or twelve people in the half-lit restaurant, most appearing to have a thin soup and a sketchy-looking sourdough. All of them quietly sized up Doug as he entered.

Doug had been given the heads up by Roeland that no one possessed a volume of the old Federal Reserve Notes that would actually buy anything in most any business—he’d have to either use trade goods, silver, or in the case of something very expensive, a gold coin. His own Regent salary, adjusted for the collapse and with his most recent raise, had changed from over two hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year in FRN’s to just under fourteen thousand dollars a year, payable in gold or silver coin or Regent’s internal Silver Trust Account…which was effectively paper that could in theory be exchanged for physical metal. In theory.

“Ready to order?” a middle-aged waitress asked. Her faded nametag read ‘Meg’.

“Yes, thanks. This is to go, order for some folks at the hospital,” Doug said, handing the waitress the order. She scanned it quickly.

“You got money for all this?” she asked quietly, eyebrows raised a little.

“Uh, yeah. What’s the total?”

“Three dollars, silver,” Meg replied quietly, after adding it up quickly.

“Yeah,” Doug said, fishing out several silver dollars. “Here,” he said, handing them over. She looked at them and weighed them in her hand, assessing that they were real.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked, hoping it appeared, for Doug to spend more money.

“Not right now, thanks. How long?”

“Oh, ten, fifteen minutes or so. You can wait at the counter if you like. Coffee? It’s real. Two bits for sixteen ounces,” Meg asked expectantly, with a raised eyebrow. “Cream included.”

“OK—set me up,” Doug replied, sliding her a silver quarter dollar as he took out the PDA, made some notes, and reviewed his travel list for the trip back to Denver. Meg smiled a little as she slid him a travel cup of coffee.

Good to her word, Doug’s take out meals were bagged up in two grocery sacks, within fifteen minutes of his order.

“Thanks, Meg,” Doug said. “One more thing before I go,” he said quietly.

“Sure. Whatcha need?”

“After I leave, buy everyone in here a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake. This’ll cover it,” Doug said, sliding over a short stack of silver dollars. “OK?”

“Absolutely. You some kind of rich guy or what?” Meg asked.

“No. I’ve been lucky is all. Don’t tell them whom it’s from, OK? And this one’s for you,” Doug said, sliding another silver dollar to her on the worn linoleum counter.

“You got it, hon,” Meg said softly patting Doug’s hand. “Thanks.”

Julie and the Seghers were seated in a smaller waiting room off of the main entry. Doug arrived to find them in mid prayer, and waited until they’d finished before entering.

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“She’s got the flu. The next mutation,” Peter said. “They’ve got her on IV’s and they’re doing what they can.”

“Did she have it in the winter?” Doug asked as he opened up the sacks.

“Yes, mild case. That’s in her favor,” Peter said, passing the boxed meals around. “Still, she was down for almost a week.”

“Bong Bong chicken, fried rice, vegetables and sweet and sour sauce,” Doug said, handing Julie her container. “And green tea,” he said, before handing Peter and Arie their bacon cheeseburgers and fries, milkshakes, and finally getting Maria’s sweet and sour pork, noodles, and tea. “That place has quite the menu.”

“What did you order?” Julie asked, between bites.

“Almond chicken,” Doug replied. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything like this.” He didn’t mention spending some of his money to buy a few hamburgers.

“This had to be spendy,” Julie said.

“Worth it,” Doug said, taking his first bite of fried rice. ‘Worth every bit,’ he thought. “After I finish, I’d like to go over to the Army Guard installation—it’s over by the restaurant. I figure I should see how my letter of resignation has been received.”

“OK, but don’t dawdle,” Julie said. “We’ll need to be home and by curfew.”

“Curfew?” Doug asked.

“Six p.m.,” Arie said. “Governor’s orders, effective today. They announced it on television while you were out. There seemed to be much the man was not saying through the few words he spoke.”

Twenty-five minutes later, Doug arrived at the Army Guard center, where a black-clad security policeman, inside an anti-ram barrier, greeted him.

“Sir, step out of your car please,” another man, asked. Doug hadn’t seen him approach.

“Sure. I work for the…” He was cut off.

“Please step out of your car,” the man repeated.

“OK,” Doug replied before complying. He was directed about fifteen feet away from the vehicle with an M-16 leveled at him.

“Any weapons in the vehicle, sir?” a third man asked.

“Yes. There’s a .45 in a range bag in the back, and an AR-15 in a padded case. They’re kind of required for us in the field,” Doug said, lying. “I’m with the Food and Drug Administration. Based in Denver.”

“You carrying?” the third man asked.

“Not right now,” Doug stated.

“We need to search your vehicle, sir,” the first man stated. “Richards, get his I.D. and get it scanned.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir, did this have a Government designation on the doors?” the first officer asked.

“Yes. That designation was not viewed favorably among several populations,” Doug said. “I removed it in an effort to not get myself shot,” Doug replied, embellishing his story.

“Federal I.D. number, Sir?”

“Three one six six eight four seven one,” Doug replied without hesitation. That number was the prefix to his FDA security log in on the computer network.

“Last two of your alpha?”

“Echo Zulu,” Doug answered.

“Checks out, Connors,” ‘Richards’ replied.

“OK. Stand down then. Mr. Peterson, your vehicle isn’t allowed to enter the facility. You can enter the facility through that door over there, escorted by Mr. Davis. You’ll have about a half hour of secure communications before this facility locks down. Understood?”

“Yep. Just checking in with Denver. Shouldn’t take long,” Doug said, playing along with the ‘we’re all on one side’ vibe.

Doug entered the foyer, and then was directed into a windowless room with a half-dozen cubicles with abnormally high enclosures. The door clicked shut behind him, reminding him of the sound of a prison door in all too many television shows and movies.

Logging into the network, Doug was immediately faced with a half-dozen URGENT emails, directing him to return to Denver ASAP. Each email listed departure times and flight numbers from Des Moines to Denver, dating from two days ago. He’d also miss today’s flight, departing in a little more than an hour.

He was immediately faced with the requirement from the FDA to ‘extract’ immediately in the face of ‘looming travel restrictions on 9/11’ making return on that date and for several following days ‘impossible’. By logging in and downloading his messages and files to his flash drive, the Department knew that he’d received the orders.

He would now need to tell Julie that he had to leave in the morning.

Fifteen minutes later, Doug was back in the parking lot, and was met by Julie, Arie and Peter. Maria volunteered to spend the night at the hospital, and had brought an overnight bag in preparation. Peter would need to get home to little Ian; and the Farm needed Arie. Julie and Doug’s labors would also be needed in Maria’s absence, Arie explained.

“I’ve got some news,” Doug said. “I’ve been ordered back to Denver, first thing in the morning.”

“What’s happened?”

“I have no idea,” Doug said, starting up the Jeep. “I’ve got quite a number of emails to review. There’s…desperation, or panic, or something going on. I don’t understand it. They’re saying that there will be travel restrictions by 9/11 that will continue for quite some time. I don’t know what that’s about.”

“Another attack?” Peter asked.

“If there were one, they know in advance and won’t stop it?” Doug asked.

“Or perhaps they cannot stop it,” Arie answered.

The Farm hadn’t taken care of itself during the emergency…but the network of friends and extended family responded immediately. When Doug drove his Jeep up to the equipment shed, he noticed a half-dozen horses grazing in one of the pastures nearby—none of them belonged to Arie.

“This is really something,” Doug said as he pulled up to the door. Twenty men and women met them, coming from the house, barn and sheds.

“Friends,” Arie said. “We have many friends.”

Dinner for the many Seghers and their friends was served from a row of large stewpots and a handmade willow basket containing miniature loaves of sourdough. The crowd stood, sat, and milled around the main floor of the home, while listening to the report on Molly. Several of the older women shared knowing looks as Doug looked on.

None of those looks appeared to be optimistic.

Julie was showing the strain of the day, and while Doug could see that she wanted to stay up, she was fading.

“You should get some rest, hon,” Doug told her quietly.

“I know,” she said. “But I’d like to visit more. We never get the chance.”

“You need to stay healthy. That means you eat right, you sleep when you need to, you stay hydrated,” Doug replied, quite seriously. “Now off to bed!”

“Julie’s off to bed everyone,” Doug told the assemblage. “She’d love to stay up and visit of course.” With that, several of the motherly influences in the room quickly rose and escorted Julie to her room, giving her a little more time for talking. Most of the men by this time were assembled in the dining room, looking over a map of the region. The conversation ceased when he entered the room. Jake excused himself from the group, and took Doug to the equipment shed.

“Got that PDA?” Jake asked.

“Sure,” Doug said, fishing it out of his pocket. “You think I picked up something today?”

“No time like the present to find out. Did you happen to keep track of where you were, and when? I mean, with some specifics?”

“More or less. Give me that map,” Doug said as Jake hooked up the PDA to a laptop.

Doug penciled in the route, approximate times of arrival at the hospital; the restaurant; back to the hospital; and to the Guard center. Jake brought up his decryption program and it immediately listed the elapsed time since activation. “That Palm has a GPS in it doesn’t it? Isn’t this redundant?”

“It’s not quite a GPS. It’s more of a three-dimensional track recorder that can ping off of commercial geographic information systems transmitters and perhaps a commercial GPS satellite. I need to overlay the track with your known coordinates to better understand what the device has learned. That helps locate, within reason, a large cache of tags or groupings of tags. It could locate individual tags of course, but those are of less value,” Jake said. “Holy crap,” he said as the screen filled with hits. “Where were you at ten after four this afternoon?”

“National Guard Readiness Center in Mount Pleasant. I was checking email.”

“You were virtually on top of thousands of RFID tags. You were within a hundred feet of them,” Jake said.

“What?” Doug exclaimed.

“Don’t say another word. I want the others to hear this,” Jake said, hurrying out of the shed.

“The guards acted military. They wore dark grey and black digital camo. That new stuff that they’ve been using in the cities…the stuff with the bigger pattern. Black Kevlar helmets. Goggles. They looked Army to me. I didn’t question them on the matter,” Doug said to the gathering of a dozen men, beyond the Segher family gathered in the equipment shed.

“Jake, what is the breakdown of the tags? Have you analyzed it?” One of the men asked. He was unfamiliar to Doug.

“Forty soldiers per unit; complement including one long gun, one sidearm, one load-carrying vest or sling-pouch, one three day pack or equivalent, six magazines per man per long gun, two mags per handgun or the equivalent in speed loaders. There are enough for nearly thirteen hundred units within range of Doug’s position. Equipment for around fifty-thousand men.”

“Fifty-thousand!” Doug exclaimed.

“Fifty thousand,” Jake confirmed. “Obviously your guards weren’t Army. That facility has been co-opted by whichever civilian contracting force was hired by the National Guard and is being used for secure weapons storage for someone who’s building a private army.”

“We’ll have eyes on it from now on,” another man stated.

“You need more than that. The contents of that building need to never see the light of day,” Jake said. “Or, more correctly, they need to not fall into the wrong hands.” No one had a quick reply.

“What do we know about that building?” Jake asked.

“Ten foot fences with razor wire on all sides. Ten inch thick concrete walls containing the weapons storage area; hardened steel doors. Outer shell is a reinforced concrete masonry wall. Roof structure is concrete span deck. Air handlers are ground mounted. Glazing is ballistic grade throughout with anti-blast provisions in all frames. Grilles in front of all windows too, similar to RPG protection on vehicles. Oh, and motion-sensing memory cameras everywhere, most of which you can’t see,” a balding man replied. He was sitting atop a workbench, and looked a little bored. “Those remember what things looked like over time. A shadow passing through their field of view triggers an alert, assuming they’ve got the system tuned up that high. Tough nut to crack.”

“Power?” Jake asked.

“Aside from mains power, there is a very large diesel generator for primary power, and a secondary powered by propane. Uninterruptible power supplies within the building run security and life-safety systems for seventy-two hours, minimum. Those backup generators are exercised monthly. Communications are hot-linked to their regional command center, with flash traffic linked from D.C. Hardwire and satellite.”

“Guess on staffing?” someone asked.

“Not more than six. But if you don’t take them all at once, that building gets locked down and it’ll be a noisy proposition getting inside.”

“Night staffing? Watches?”

“If we’re lucky, they’re complacent and are depending on the technology to wake them up. If we’re not, they have at least two people up and about. Recon will tell you that. If I were a betting man, which I am not, I’d guess they button it up and stay inside all night, rather than send someone out in the dark.”

“You’re making too much out of this,” a tall, thin man wearing a very worn denim jacket said.

“How so?” Jake said.

“They won’t call D.C. if they’re attacked, because if they’re discovered, it’s game over. They’re probably not Feds. They’ll call their handlers, whoever that might be, who will have to come in to rescue them, or abandon them to the wolves. All you have to do is make sure they don’t get out. And we can do that. Weld the doors shut and let ‘em rot in there. Cut the utilities. Disconnect the generators. If no one’s shooting at you, you’ve got plenty of time. You can even do it at night, assuming you’ve got the local gendarmes on your side. This is not a difficult problem to solve.”

“We should move on this within the next few days, and have a contingency in case they try to move that equipment.”

“Doug, what else do you have for us?” Jake asked.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. Ordered back to Denver. They’re saying that commercial flights on 9/11 won’t be possible,” he said. Many of the men looked around at each other at that comment. “I haven’t had a chance to go through all of the correspondence yet, but what I did read,” he paused for a moment before continuing, pondering the words on the computer screen, “it sounded like things are coming apart at the seams.”

"Maybe we better step up surveillance," one of the men said.

"Perhaps more than that," Arie added from the back. "Perhaps much more."

Distance, Chapter 51

2013-04-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning

September Seventh

10:00 a.m.

The big, rusty bulldozer smoothed the last of the trench cover as the last of the Weerstand fighters left the muddy ravine. Down on the Des Moines River, a similar sanitation operation had already been completed, with the attackers boats hauled from the river and trucked to a local borrow pit. By nine a.m. they had been mostly stripped of useable parts and the hulls crushed by bulldozers and a large belly-dump earthmover.

One hundred seven attackers were killed in the fighting, ten were taken as wounded. Thirty Weerstand had fanned out to search for stragglers, none had yet been found. Five Weerstand had been hurt during the night, none due to enemy fire.

Doug and Arie had arrived on scene after Doug’s shift ended. Roeland was in the northern part of the county all night, far away from the fighting. No law enforcement officers were present at the site, nor any military. The bodies had been gathered, weapons and ammunition removed, and radios taken. With utmost efficiency, the raiding teams had been laid in common graves cut by the blades of bulldozers, and immediately covered under several feet of wet Iowa earth.

None had identification of any kind, nor did they carry money, wallets, watches or any coins. Half or so carried a small green waist-belt filled with ‘energy bars’. The drink holster had some kind of sports drink. The packs had been loaded in the back of an old Chevy one-ton utility service truck, where Doug spotted them before the metal doors were closed. A similarly beat up Dodge panel van held a pile of mismatched rifles and semi-automatic handguns, on the floor of a cage within the van.

“These are Regent,” Doug told Arie, looking at the containers and packaging. “These are RNEW. I’m certain of it.”

“Charlie! A moment please,” Arie called to a forty-something man, clad in farmer overalls and a well-worn farm coat.

“Adriaan. What can I do for you?”

“Tell Douglas here about these men,” Arie said, waving to the gravesite.

The large man considered the request for a moment thoughtfully before replying. “Single minded. Relentless, but they seemed not to have a skillful leader. I believe that one of the men captured was part of the leader group,” Charlie replied. He seemed the kind of man that would be most at home at a feed store. He carried a beautiful lever-action Winchester.

“What happened when the shooting started? How did it start?” Doug asked.

“One of our young ones made a noise from that hillside. They heard it. It seemed like every gun they had fired at the noise. No random fire, no discussion, no order. It was directed right at that spot. Look at the tree there,” Charlie pointed. The sixteen-inch diameter tree had been felled by rifle fire, and many of the trees around it had been torn apart. “That tree landed next to the young man who made the noise. Had it not been for the earth berm, he’d have been cut to pieces.”

“Singular focus,” Doug said to himself.

“When most of them had ceased firing, two or three of them tried to move them forward. We then fired on them from the west side of the ravine before they could reload. They then began to fire on us, and the east side caught them in the back. They never panicked or ran. They stayed their ground and fired until we killed them,” Charlie explained.

“The wounded? What of them?”

“Most were wounded several times. Some had spinal injuries. Some were shot in their gun hand. Even so, they all were trying to fight up until the point where they were disarmed.”

“Did they do as they were told once you disarmed them?” Doug asked.

Charlie seemed surprised by the question. “Well, yes. They gave up.”

“They received new orders. From you.” Doug said.

“Douglas, we need to leave now,” Arie said, looking to the east. A helicopter was moving toward them, several miles away still, but close enough to warrant caution.

“These drugs in food. You are sure of this?” Arie said to Doug as they drove further west, away from both the Farm and the ambush site. Arie noted that the helicopter continued to fly west, apparently up the Des Moines River.

“This is more extreme than what I witnessed personally, but from what I read of the research, this is in keeping with the effects of the RNEW when fully activated,” Doug said. “Do you think that’s their helicopter?” he asked, looking through the rear window at the disappearing tree line.

“It would make sense if they are as organized as we suspect. We do not know if the plans for last night were provided to them, or if they were generated by those that attacked. We have to assume that they are looking for their missing friends,” Arie said, point toward the distant dot that was the helicopter.

“What happens next? What if another bunch comes?” Doug asked.

“Eyes are watching for many miles. If they come, they will be met again.”

“Where did they come from? Do you know?”

“The boats were launched on the Missouri side, downriver at the Fort Pike boat launch. They then came upstream past the Battle of Athens historic site, where they were first heard, although we couldn’t get a good idea on how many were coming. Then past Farmington and Bonaparte, where one of our people with night vision told us more. They came up Coppers Creek and beached there. Then they came overland up the drainage. Before the launch point, we do not know.”

Doug continued. “So they know—if they’re looking for them—that these raiders launched from that point…Fort Pike? The trucks and trailers are probably there, so they’d look up river.”

“The trucks and trailers are gone. They were gone before dawn,” Arie said.

“OK,” Doug said, thinking about a logical next step. “So they either come and investigate or they move along.”

“Yes. We hope for the latter but plan for the former,” Arie said.

They drove on, heading to the northwest, stopping at a small cemetery. Arie didn’t speak, but exited the old farm truck quietly, heading into an obviously much older part of the graveyard. Doug quietly followed from a respectful distance. Arie came to stop before a large, simple marker, stained with lichen.

“My grandparents,” Arie said quietly. “They died this day, seventy-five years ago. They had gone to Keokuk, to market. A madman drove his truck into their car at sixty miles per hour.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Douglas. There is madness in the world, there is evil. That same man had that same day run over a ten year old on a bicycle, and before he could be tried, he hung himself in a jail cell,” Arie said, sweeping a few leaves away from the base of the stone. “What you have told us is that the company you work for has created evil that can be summoned with mere words. That men can be corrupted by eating of this food and of this drink. Douglas, what I heard this morning forces me to say this: You must leave this company, or you must leave our farm. I cannot abide this.”

“I’ve already written my letter of resignation.”

“Free yourself of this evil. You must do it soon, Douglas. It will consume all those who are near it.”

“I understand.”

2:00 p.m.

Arie and Doug told all at the farm about the attack and outcome, and then Arie had taken a packet of papers taken from the attackers, along with some captured radios, and taken them to Jake. Doug didn’t remember anything carried by Arie to the truck; the items must’ve been stashed there by one of the Weerstand while they were out of the truck.

Doug was exhausted after his shift and the mornings’ activities. After the mid-day meal, he showered (with Julie, to save water of course) and changed into sleeping clothes. Julie was ready for her mid-day nap, and Doug was asleep within a few minutes.

His dreams were not pleasant.

Saturday morning,

September Ninth

7:00 a.m.

Doug worked alongside several of the Segher cousins on the morning chores, happy to be relieved from patrol duty. A second night of cold rain made the experience miserable, with boots that hadn’t dried, sketchy rain gear, and a cold, constant wind. He’d been unpleasantly surprised by Kurt Segher early the previous morning, who stealthily overtook Doug’s observation position unnoticed. Doug’s radio had failed, and he hadn’t noticed it—it appeared to be transmitting, had a full battery pack, but something had failed in the circuitry. The base station operator, a Segher cousin by the name of Susan, had followed protocol and tried to contact Doug with a code-word response with no luck. When the other observation posts in the area also failed to reach Doug, prescribed plans were put into motion.

Kurt was the first to arrive, silently arriving in Doug’s observation post as Doug looked out toward a blackened tree line. He’d nearly had a heart attack as Kurt poked him in the back with a bayonet, fixed on his rifle. Kurt also had the advantage of third-generation night vision, one of four such setups within the Weerstand. Doug didn’t really stand a chance.

Kurt provided Doug a new radio, and disappeared back into the dark rain. Doug had three more hours of watching and listening to the wind and rain, with regular radio checks.

In his time on the Farm, Doug had learned more about small farm egg and dairy production than he’d learned in twenty years in commercial food production, and a fair amount about small-scale, home based food preservation as well. When he wasn’t spending precious time with Julie or on patrol, he read from the many resources in print at the Farm. Some were County Extension agent publications; some were commercial. Some, like a well-worn, stained book by Carla Emery, had obviously been loved to death. Doug made a note to try to find a copy. All the while, he was counting down the days he had left here, before returning back to Denver.

“Back to a farmhand, huh Doug?” Jake Segher asked.

“Kind of suits me. Peaceful. No one sticking a bayonet in your ribs,” Doug said as Kurt laughed.

“Got a minute? I could use a hand over in the shed,” Jake said. Kurt went off to another outbuilding.

“Sure. I’m sure this manure will wait,” Doug replied, putting down the mucking shovel. “What’s up?”

“Something to show you. You might be thinking about it when you go back to Regent,” Jake said with narrowing eyes.

“OK,” Doug said, not knowing quite what to make of the comment.

Inside the equipment shed, the cage had been dramatically expanded with the additions of chain-link panels with copper wire woven through the sections and grounded. Six large tables were placed inside the cage.

“This is the gear taken from the raiders,” Doug said. “Why’s it in here?”

“Because every stick of it was chipped. Every rifle, every magazine. Every vest, belt, holster and bandolier. Every meal pack. Every piece of this is traceable.”

Doug noted that none of the gear matched—there were well-worn, filthy equipment packs and brand-new kits and rifles scattered on the table. Someone had at least grouped the equipment by type, with AR types on one table, AK’s on another, bolt actions on two more, handguns of many styles in a pile next to mismatched magazines, bandoliers, vests, and a five-gallon bucket of loose rounds. A pile of knives, bayonets and machetes lay on the floor.

“How…” Doug started before being cut off.

“Someone took a long, long time to do this. Didn’t happen overnight,” Jake said. “More interestingly are the chips themselves. RFID of course. Eastern European design, manufactured in China; two, maybe three years ago. The coding is interesting, too. The equipment here represents three distinct operational units. The database I’ve compiled inventoried all of it. There’s a numeric order here, where each unit is generally comprised of similar numbers of men, similar mixes of bolt-action and semi-auto, similar varieties of weapons with non-matching ammunition.”

“So each unit…is a mish-mash of men, weapons, calibers…” Doug asked.

“Yes. Three units, generally the same personnel count, generally equipped with the same variety of gear. This had to be deliberate.”

“Why would they do this?”

“So they could shoot with whatever they can find,” Jake said. “They’ve chipped it I’d guess for inventory, but also for tracking. None of this has active transmitter ability—all is passive but has a fair responsive range, up to a hundred meters with an off-the-shelf reader. Which is where you come in.”

“Uh, OK, how exactly?”

“The chips in these do not record signals that ping them—meaning that they can be scanned by anyone, anywhere, and there’s no record of it. Newer chips can tell an administrator who has scanned the chip, when, where, and how many times. I’ve got a reader that I want you to take with you. It will only scan this type of chip; record what it’s scanned and where; and do it to a five hundred meter radius, very quickly and quietly. Frequently enough to get a good reading, not frequently enough to draw attention.”

“Attention?” Doug asked, surprised.

“Anyone that’s paying attention should have countermeasures in place to detect frequencies that are pinging their equipment. This should register as nothing more than rogue signals or reflected transmissions. It does not operate in a predictable pattern in either timing or signal strength,” Jake said.

“And you don’t think they’re watching?” Doug asked.

“I don’t know. This is not without risk,” Jake said, looking Doug directly in the eye. “You’re heading back to Des Moines, then to Denver come Monday. You then work there until your resignation, when you return. You may then head to points unknown. The data you collect could prove very interesting.”

“What exactly is this scanner? This reader?”

“When we had reliable cell phones, we’d use that. A smart phone with a little quiet upgrading, a little GPS tracking and data recorder. Now that most of the cell system is dead, along with most satellites, most smart phones are paperweights. So are tablets. But not the old-fashioned PDA,” Jake said, sliding an old Palm Tungsten T5 out of his pocket and handed it to Doug.

“Wow. I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Doug replied, flipping open the worn aluminum hard case and looking at the T5 like an old friend. “I had a T3. Loved that thing.”

“There’s an application on here, buried underneath a chess game. You beat the chess game on the first level, lose the second at ‘check’, win the third, and the program activates and runs for twenty-four hours and includes location tracking and a motion sensor. It’ll shut down if the unit is stationary for more than an hour. The second time you play, you forfeit immediately and the program activates. There is plenty of internal storage that’s dedicated to the tracking program, outside of any other file storage you might want to include,” Jake said. “You in?”

“How do I transmit the information?”

“You don’t. There’s no way to do it outside of a hard dock and a sync with a trusted computer carrying the unlock algorithm,” Jake said, pointing toward an old computer on the workbench. “This is old school.”

“You said motion tracking—but the GPS network is dead,” Doug said.

“Commercial telecom systems aren’t all dead. This will ping signals off of whatever and record the location information by time. You’ll need to record when you activate it—put it on the ‘notes’ app—‘Arrived in Des Moines Oh-Nine-Thirty’. That’ll let us synchronize in general terms, which is good enough. Nowhere near as accurate as a GPS, but easily enough information to provide a more global view,” Jake said. “So…you in?”

Doug thought for only a moment before replying. “Yeah. I’m in.”

11:00 a.m.

Lunch preparations were well underway when Julie’s brother Peter burst into the Kitchen. Doug had been slicing potatoes and nicked himself.

“It’s Molly. I think she has the flu,” Peter said. The room, a moment before bustling, went dead quiet. Maria switched off the burners on the stove and quickly took off her apron.

“Fever?” Maria asked, gathering up some things into a bag.

“Yes. One oh two. It’s been climbing since eight,” Peter said as Arie entered the room.

“We should see Doctor Jameson at once,” Arie said. Doug didn’t even know Arie was in the house.

“Where is his office?” Doug asked.

Julie checked the calendar. “He’s in Mount Pleasant today,” she replied. Doug didn’t know there was such a schedule posted on the calendar.

“Peter, is she here?”

“She’s in the Suburban. Beth is watching Ian,” Peter said. Baby Ian was not quite eight months old.

“Maria, you go with Peter and Molly. We’ll follow. Douglas, would you care to drive?”

“You bet,” he said as Julie handed him his jacket. The rain was picking up again. “I’ll let Jake know.” Julie looked very worried, as did Maria.

Doug retrieved the Jeep from the equipment shed, and filled Jake in on Molly’s condition. He quickly informed the rest of the family via radio, and word then spread throughout the network.

Arie helped Julie into the front seat of the Jeep, before sitting behind her on the passenger side. They quickly made their way through the barriers at the Farm inner driveway, and then headed west to Mount Pleasant, a little more than fifteen miles away. Doug turned on the AM radio as they followed Peter’s Suburban. The host seemed bitter, complaining about the President’s inability to gather enough momentum to deal with any one crisis effectively, causing all of the immediate problems to be much worse. The bombardment of multiple crises was just beyond Lambert’s ability. Arie reached over and shut off the radio.

The rest of the trip was made in silence.

Distance, Chapter 50

2013-03-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning,

September Sixth

8:00 a.m.

Julie’s appointment with the family OB/GYN provided Doug an opportunity to check in with the FDA office via email from Fairfield, and hopefully get a better perspective of the world outside of the Farm. Doug would’ve preferred to stay for the appointment, but was shooed out of the office for an hour, with both of the ladies smiling.

The National Guard center had three civilian guards in full body armor, watching over the mostly empty facility. Doug checked in with his Federal I.D., signed in on a digital pad and then had to use a thumbprint pad to gain access to one of the secure computer terminals. He wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of email, voice message and conflicting messages. He checked the emails in order, oldest-first, skipping over the departmental briefings, security memos and news summaries.

The first surprise was the replacement of Lorraine Bancroft with three new executive assistants. Each had prepared what appeared to be a personal greeting; each greeting appeared to be jockeying for position or preference, as if the FDA were now a multi-level marketing scheme and each ‘Doug-level’ liaison was worth a certain number of points.

The next shock was a completely new itinerary and ‘encouragement’ to proceed with best time to the first location on the new itinerary, which was in the next email, abandoned in favor of a completely different strategy.

The newer emails limited the travel, and then revoked it completely. The most recent emails directed Doug to return to Denver on September eleventh for meetings on the twelfth.

Doug skimmed the emails again quickly, seeing the pattern of confusion but sensing more. Unlike his previous visit, the briefings, memos and news summaries were fully downloadable…which Doug thought was probably a breach in FDA security protocol. Doug weighed the risks, while fishing out a flash drive. He downloaded all of them for later reading. As he completed the download, one of the assistants ‘pinged’ him for a video call. He authorized the call, and was greeted by an overly groomed late twenty something male. None of the names provided in the prior emails looked ‘male’.

“Good morning, Mister Peterson. Sorry to disturb you are on vacation. I’m Britt Redmon, first assistant to the Secretary.” ‘First assistant my ass,’ Doug thought.

“Good morning. Just getting caught up on emails. Looks like things have been busy,” Doug said, not asking about Lorraine.

“They have, yes. You’ve by now seen your new itinerary, correct?” Redmon asked. Doug instantly disliked the man.

“There is a substantial reorganization coming to the Department, and to several other departments. The Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary wanted to include you in the conversation, hence the meeting next week.”

“OK, fair enough. What about the production issues here in the Midwest? Are those issues magically resolved?” Doug said with some irritation.

“Oh, no. Those are just lower priorities at this time. Given the fluidity of the security in that region, the Department does not believe that your prior assignment is worth the risk.”

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Doug thought to himself, but forced himself to sit back in his chair as if surprised at the revelation. “Sorry. I didn’t really believe the news. I should be able to get out of Des Moines on Monday for a Tuesday meeting.”

“Would you be in a position to receive any additional information from the Under Secretary prior to your return?” Redmon asked, looking at the camera over the tops of his overly thin glasses.

“No,” Doug replied flatly. “This is my last trip into town before I come back on Monday.”

“Unfortunate,” Redmon replied with raised eyebrows.

“Such are current communications. I look forward to meeting you next week, Britt,” Doug said.

“That will have to wait. I will be in another location. Good day,” the ‘first assistant’ said before ending the videoconference.

Doug had about ten more minutes before he had to leave to pick up Julie. In that time, he wrote his letter of resignation, effective September thirtieth, and sent it directly to the Secretary, bypassing the assistants, the Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary. He cited the need to be close to Julie during the later months of her pregnancy, and wished the Department well.

“How’d everything go?” Doug asked as Julie and Cath climbed in the Jeep. He turned the radio down, after listening to the forecast…rain by evening.

“Couldn’t be better!” Julie said with a big smile as she kissed Doug. “Everything’s just fine.”

“And what did you do for entertainment?” Cath asked.

“I read a bunch of emails, departmental news and then resigned from the FDA.”

“WOW! Effective now? Say yes,” Julie said definitively.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so excited to be married to someone unemployed,” Doug said. “September thirtieth.”

“Not soon enough,” Cath said. “And of Regent? When for them?”

“Soon as I can,” Doug said as he started the Jeep.

“Remember to stop at Stefana’s before we leave town,” Julie said. Stefana was a friend of the family who had a retail maternity shop before the collapse. The shop now ran on trades of all kinds.

“Not a problem,” Doug said.

A few minutes later they arrived at the small storefront, sandwiched between closed franchised coffee and sandwich shops. Stefana Groesbeck’s family had leased the land to the national franchises and had built the three shops turnkey in exchange for a sizeable signing bonus and favorable terms over the lease. With the closure of the franchise outlets, the property and penalties were paid to the family, more than covering the development cost.

“You stay put and we’ll be right back!” Julie said to Doug, now feeling like a chauffeur. He noted that Cath took a file box into the store, which Doug figured was a front for a cell of the Weerstand.

Doug had not been invited to attend the meetings, held on three consecutive nights off the farm. He didn’t take offense at all—as he’d finally been cleared for night patrol. In the distance, two nights before, Doug had been in a watchman’s location, a half-mile from the house. The still night was interrupted by rifle and semi-automatic weapons fire…and not a single word was heard on any of the radio frequencies about it.

It had been impossible to tell the range of the brief firefight; Doug wasn’t that experienced in such matters, and the fickle wind could’ve carried the sound for a very long way. With no reports coming in from any of the farms, men from the Weerstand had to be hunting raiding parties. The following morning, Arie took one of the small pickups from the farm, alone, and returned two hours later. Doug noticed that the bed of the pickup held a covered bundle of something that was missing when Arie returned.

The town was ‘quiet’ of course, with only a handful of shops of any kind open for trading, and Doug noted that each of them had someone nearby with a shotgun or rifle in plain sight. On top of the hardware store, two men with rifles were positioned, and he noted that at least one other person had a large spotting scope atop the roof. Most of the traffic in town was composed of bicycles with cargo trailers, although a few people rode in on horseback. He turned up the radio to kill some time.

“…no idea what they’ve done. The shortages are everywhere, another unintended consequence of unending incremental regulation. Of course prices have been through the roof for years now, but as soon as stock becomes available, any ammunition not already in a pipeline to the Army or Homeland Security is snapped up in a frenzy that sharks would be proud of. It seems the only state left that has half a brain is Texas, now the home to ninety percent of firearms manufacturers in the country, and sixty percent of the ammunition manufacturers.”

‘You’ve visited the clue store,’ Doug thought of the talk show host.

“I don’t really see that changing any time soon, either, America. There are things going on in the East that demand our immediate action and the President is giving it lip service. We’ve got thugs running around in packs and attacking entire towns from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes! Little towns! Farms! Where’s the Federal response? Where the Hell is Homeland? It’s on you, my friends, because they’re covering their own asses. The Feds are sending ‘advisory teams’ to the states. Right. Like we need more people playing dictator and demanding our allegiance! It’s on you to defend yourself and your family…but thanks to the actions of this creeping regulatory parasite we know as the Federal Government, a whole lot of you will be defending yourself with bird guns and revolvers and no more than a hundred rounds of ammunition of all kinds per address. You’re in violation of that? Federal implications. You defend yourself and are investigated by even your local cop? He is mandated to report any and all findings of firearms, ammunition, reloading equipment of any kind. Unregistered thirty-round mag in fifteen states? Jail time and forfeiture of assets, citizen. If Officer Friendly doesn’t report you? Well, thanks to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, his jurisdiction can lose all Federal funding and HE can be investigated!”

“This guy’s on a roll,” Doug said aloud, wondering whom the host was.

“This is where we are, America. This is what we’ve come to. Too late to fix it within the framework of legislation, because the legislators threw you under the bus. Re-read the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence my friends, and keep going from there. Then ask yourself honestly, are you are in any better shape NOW, than the Founders were as they contemplated revolution. Are you? Hell, no you’re not. In fact, you’re probably much worse off and you just don’t realize it.”

“Where’s your flash point? Where do you decide that you want the Constitution back? Is it after the thugs steal everything you’ve earned and built? Then you’re late—because they already have. Your retirement funds were nationalized, remember? That 401K you worked so hard for? That investment account? That 529 plan you worked so hard to fund so that your kids could go to school? Remember when you could choose your own doctor, and decide for yourself if you wanted to buy insurance—or not? BAM—nationalized so that the Ponzi could continue. Remember when you could order ammunition and have it delivered? As much as you could afford? Remember walking into a gun shop and being able to walk out with a rifle? Or three? Remember those days? Remember folks who had licenses for Collectible and Antique firearms? They used to buy weapons and have them shipped to their houses! That’s now a Federal prison sentence! Mark my words: They’re going to come out with some cockamamie scam with rainbow colored money and start it all over again. If you get in their way, they’ll run you over—they’ll find a way to outspend you, wear you down, deny your God-given rights, deny your Federal train-wreck of a medical insurance program…and kill you by doing so. This is how they plan to win. This is how they plan to wipe out opposition,” the host said as Julie and Cath opened the doors to the Jeep. Cath was carrying a different box that seemed heavier.

“Whatcha got on?” Julie asked.

“Some guy on fire,” Doug replied as the commentator continued. Cath answered.

“Rice. Danny Rice. He’s down in Hannibal,” Cath said, listening to the continuing monologue. “It’s too bad no one’s been listening to him. He’s been saying this for years.”

“It’s coming. It’s coming as sure as the sun will rise. There’s a real fine line between sovereign citizen and partisan. A real fine line.”

“Honey, you should be getting some sleep. You’re on watch at midnight,” Julie told Doug at half-past four.

“I know. Almost done,” he said. “Arie’s up at six, right?”

“Yes, then on watch,” Julie said. Doug couldn’t get over how pretty she looked. “Why?”

“I think he should read this. I’ll write a note for him.”

“If you’re not in bed in fifteen minutes, I’ll not be happy,” Julie said with eyebrows raised and chin lowered.

“I’ll be there,” Doug said with a little grin. She’d made him a light dinner that would be followed by ‘breakfast’ before he went on watch.

He was tired, but he plowed ahead, with just a few more pages to cover. He’d been reading more than two hundred pages of briefings sent out to Federal administrators, succinctly covering news events, foreign and domestic, that could have an impact on Federal operations. The distilled news briefs had been provided for decades to those in D.C., and now were produced and coordinated in all Federal zones in North America and in the handful of remaining overseas bases.

The briefs clinically described ‘bandits’ robbing numerous local, state and Federal locations; first of food, later of other equipment; later still of people, thought to be held for ransom. No analysis or other commentary was made—the statements were reported for the analysis of the reader.

President Lambert’s coverage included meeting with families of two Medal of Honor winners from a battle in Monterrey; his looking forward to the Supreme Court ruling on a number of crucial issues in October; and a pending address to the full Congress—the first since January—on September fifteenth. No mention of the Vice President or any Cabinet members was made.

In Mexico, the briefs described current efforts in ‘pacification’ in the most general terms, without unit descriptions of any kind or any enlightenment of how the war was progressing.

Throughout the review of the briefs and the FDA departmental memos, there was very little—perhaps only a hundred words—covering the New Republic. For such a dramatic threat—even a small group of radicals—Doug could not understand why so little coverage was provided. The dearth of crop production in the Midwest in a general Federal briefing covered eight hundred words, and that particular brief was an update of a monthly projection.

For threats of secession, there was virtually no ‘news’ to report. Doug wrote Arie as much, posing the question for Arie’s consideration.

September Sixth

11:35 p.m.

Julie’s wind-up alarm clock sounded next to Doug’s head, and he gently extricated himself from the soundly sleeping mother-to-be, curled into him after some brief, intense lovemaking. Doug hadn’t ever dreamed that sex with a pregnant Julie could be so…incredible. To the contrary, he’d expected to be ‘cut off’. To their mutual delight, he was quite wrong.

‘Breakfast’ included hot tea, hard boiled eggs, smoked ham and biscuits, retrieved from a sealed container that Maria had set aside for the night watch. The tea was quite strong, brewed automatically on a timer, and he poured the thermos full, saving a cup for the meal. Doug ate quickly and suited up in black, cloth-type raingear before heading out to the equipment shed for a pre-patrol briefing. The rain was spattering into the windows despite the wide, covered porch.

The waterproof rain shell and overalls were made of some kind of soft cloth that shed water, remained quiet when rain hit it, and blended in well with the darkened watchmen’s positions. Roeland called them Elven Cloaks.

Doug entered the blanketed vestibule in the equipment shed, and found Arie, his daughter Elisabeth and son Hendrik gathered around the radios. Hendrik and Arie’s watch wrapped up at midnight, and it was not customary for them to be anywhere but in the watchmen’s positions until relieved.

“What’s going on?” Doug asked.

“There’s an ambush about to be sprung. We didn’t want to be in the middle of it,” Hendrik replied. Doug noted that neither of them was wet from the rain.

“What about patrol? Watch?”

“Not tonight. The Weerstand is close,” Arie said. “Hendrik, show him on the map,” Arie said, listening to one of the headsets. Doug thought he heard someone on the radio speaking Dutch.

Hendrik motioned Doug to a large map of the farm, marked with a coordinate grid that would normally correspond to GPS coordinates for nearly automated farming. With the loss of the GPS system and most communications satellites, the map was a bit of a relic.

“The Weerstand put out some information that we were having some storage issues here—implying that we had supplies at risk because we didn’t have enough men,” Hendrik explained.

“A trap? Here?”

“Sure. Good reason too,” Hendrik continued. “They came up from the south, through these farms that pulled back defensive and patrol lines. This is a funnel that they had to pass through,” he said, showing three and a half miles of woods and streams through a well-defined drainage, leading toward the Des Moines River.

“How many men?”

“Enemy count is one hundred thirty, more or less. They have boats at the river and men there. When action starts here, they’ll go down too,” Hendrik said.

“Where is the target? I mean, where do you spring it?”

“Half mile south. The Gunder cattle barn. The red one,” Hendrik said.

“The Weerstand is there?” Doug asked.

“No, just south of that in force. There are a few men there, to make it look like a soft target. If it goes as planned, most of the enemy will never reach the barn.”

“Hendrik, why wasn’t I told about this?”

“We didn’t know where they’d be striking or when. If they had picked another night, you’d be out in the far post, looking at black rain. They picked tonight, so tonight it is.”

“Where did they come from?” Doug asked.

“We’re not sure. If we catch some alive, we might be able to find out.”

Doug heard Arie say something firmly, that sounded like ‘Aanvallen’.

“What did he say?” Doug asked.

“Dutch. ‘Attack’.” Hendrik replied.

Elisabeth took off her headphones and flipped on the speakers for all to hear. As Doug had been instructed in this eventuality, the men in the field at this point were in charge to direct the battle. There was nothing to do now but to listen and wait. Six frequencies on each of the radios and scanners competed for attention. The enemy conveniently had a single unencrypted frequency; the Weerstand had eleven that were encrypted, covering various parts of the route from the Des Moines to the Gunder barn. The fighting was over within fifteen minutes.

“All right then. It is over for now,” Arie said. “Douglas, you may proceed to Wilde boom,” the ‘wild tree’.

Doug knew that even with a large raiding party being wiped out, there could be stragglers or lone attackers, waiting for advantage.

“Thomas will be at the spring house soon,” Hendrik said. “He’ll be covering that side. Kurt is down with a fever.”

“Anything serious?” Doug asked.

“Too soon to tell. He didn’t get the flu in the spring, so we’ll have to wait and see,” Hendrik said, handing Doug his radio and his pack. Doug tucked the thermos into a pocket.

“We talk tomorrow, Douglas. Ja?” Arie asked. “This news of yours. Interesting.”

“For what it didn’t say and for what it did.”

Arie nodded without speaking, looking at the map of the farm. “You sound as if you are surprised that your government is lying to you. Surely you are not that naïve, Douglas.”

Distance, Chapter 49

2013-01-31T19:14:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning,

September Second

4:04 a.m.

Doug had volunteered for the two to six a.m. watch, but had been overruled from perimeter watch until Roeland, Peter and Hendrik could train him on procedures and the lay of the land. Instead, he was tasked with listening to overnight patrol reports from the main farm and seven other adjacent farms in the alliance. Each had their own frequencies; each had their own base station monitoring all of the others as well as numerous other pre-programmed frequencies in the region. Between the seven farms, nearly a thousand frequencies were scanned, covering many of the active ham radio bands; police, fire and emergency services from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids, into Illinois and well into Missouri. Should any trouble arise on any of the local farms everyone on watch would know about it immediately. If one farm needed assistance, all other farms stood ready to send reinforcements, while still maintaining their own defenses.

The system had been set up after an attack on a distant relatives’ farm outside of Monona, in northeastern Iowa. A similar setup with communications had been in place, and when the call went out for aid, nearly all of the watchmen and reserves responded. The three other farms were then hit with multiple attacks—the first had been diversionary to assess defenses and to pin down those defenders while brute force overwhelmed the rest of the farms, stripped of defenses as part of the mutual aid response. The survivors estimated the attacking force at more than a hundred men. The attackers then retreated in an orderly manner into Wisconsin.

The seven farms in the Segher alliance though, were just one cell of many. Word of any attack from any direction on any of the rural properties would rapidly spread. Relationships built between neighbors over generations of farming and marriage and business created the quilt of common bond throughout the region.

An old, stained map had been pinned to the corkboard above the bank of radios in the equipment shed, not far from where Doug’s Jeep was parked. The map had been marked with a bright orange highlighter, identifying areas that were ‘claimed’ by the New Republic. Most of Illinois lay within their claim, and it was possible that the raiding party from Wisconsin was part of this new threat. There were few States that agreed with—in public—the New Republic Declaration of Independence, but reports on shortwave spread like wildfire. Many of the Northeastern states were supporting—covertly—this New Republic organization. Already, refugees from these states were beginning to move West, and running low on fuel well short of their destinations.

Family farm operations across the region were a fraction of pre-Collapse in size, but diversity had increased dramatically. With many of the corporate farms lying fallow for lack of fuel, seed and fertilizer, the smaller subsistence farms were wrapping up their summer harvests. Temperatures over the average Labor Day weekend were normally in the high seventies or eighties, with lows in the fifties at night. This year however, the highs barely hit seventy, and nighttime temperatures hovered around forty degrees. The Federal weather prediction system had no explanation for the cooler temperatures, and no meaningful outlook for the coming fall and winter.

Arie however, knew early in the year that something was dramatically different, and doubled the production of cool-weather crops, while tightly minding the inventories of grains for both human and animal use, buying or trading for more as the season went on.

The extended family had been canning and dehydrating food from early June on, filling the storerooms at the main farm, Catharina and Tom’s new home, Peter and Molly’s place, and the rest of the families storerooms. Root crops would be coming out of the ground within the next few weeks, and would again be distributed to various root cellars of the family. Winter squash would be stored intact; pressure canned, and dehydrated, Doug learned from Julie. Doug had little doubt that the Segher clan would make it through the winter in good shape, missing little in the way of store-bought foods.

Jake Segher’s workbench held the pile of electronics retrieved from the police station, and several neatly organized stations where the electronics that were transmitting were opened up for inspection. After opening up the shortwave transceiver case, a trip wire of some kind attached to the case shorted out the transmitting feature of the modified radio, Jake discovered to his irritation. He removed the non-factory parts and placed them in their own little copper box. Using what he’d learned from the shortwave transceiver, Jake carefully examined the cable television box before cracking the case open. The cable box, Jake discovered, had an independent power supply, RFID chip, wi-fi transmitter, a video feed, and a substantial flash-memory storage card—none of it factory installed, and none of the technology had anything in common with the parts removed from the shortwave. Additionally the cable box additions were completely hidden under the main cable TV circuit board, out of view of casual inspection.

After dinner the previous evening, Jake and Doug talked about Jake’s discoveries, as Doug removed the United States Government stickers from the Jeep with a heat gun and a razor blade. Doug concluded that the equipment was all put in by Regent. Jake however, concluded that the cable gear was too sophisticated for a private sector corporation, unless it was engaged in industrial espionage in a hostile location.

“Why would they monitor their own staff with such sophistication?” he asked Doug.

“Because they trust no one,” Doug replied.

“Nonsense. You’re proof that you’re wrong. If they didn’t trust you, you’d be dead in a ditch someplace or fed to the pigs.”

“Point made,” Doug said with no small amount of shock. “Let me clarify. I believe there are factions within Regent that don’t trust anyone—that use whatever means necessary to get leverage over others.”

“OK. That does make sense, but I’m still not buying it. I think this stuff is Big Brother,” Jake replied. “One way or the other, you’ll probably find out soon enough. I seriously doubt they’ll like having this equipment out in the wild all on its lonesome.”

“They’ll come for it?”

“Pretty good chance of it, once you get back to civilization, assuming they still have assets afield.”

“I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Doug said. Jake looked at Doug with unblinking eyes.

“Doug, you ever shoot anyone?”

Doug flinched a little involuntarily. “Yeah, actually. Several.”

“OK. Advice: Do not, if confronted by someone that could be Fed, get in the way--especially for something like this. Assuming you go on this road trip for the FDA next week, do yourself a favor and just leave this thing in the Jeep. If you see someone breaking in to get it, let ‘em have it. I have no idea what’s on that flash card, or if there’s anything of value at all. But I do know that once that thing is in proximity to any one of a number of innocent-looking pieces of hardware on any number of telephone poles, it will receive a query from Someone, Somewhere, and it will answer.”

“Telephone poles?” Doug asked.

“You ever see a grey box on a telephone pole? Or maybe a drum-shaped thing on a post along a road? Or just one of those green or tan phone junction boxes at the side of some road?”

“Yeah, of course,” Doug replied.

“Those don’t just provide convenient places to connect wire ‘A’ to wire ‘B’; they haven’t for many years.”

“Oh,” Doug said, feeling stupid. “I had no idea.”

“Nearly no one does,” Jake said chuckling. “All this talk about the Government adding cameras and watching people and all that over the past couple of years just makes me laugh. They’ve known for forty years everything you’ve said on the phone, every page you load on the internet, anyone you talk to, anything you write. People are up in arms two generations too late.”

As the stars in the eastern sky began to fade with the coming dawn, Doug’s quiet contemplation was destroyed with bursts of radio traffic from radio transmissions in the east.

Eighty miles away, between Peoria and Galesburg, Illinois, a probable raiding party was spotted by a deputy sheriff. Word was immediately broadcast in that area to adjacent properties and their respective protection cells. Moments after that, the radio transmissions were jammed with reports of attacks from Springfield, Illinois to Moline, just across the Mississippi from Davenport, Iowa.

Doug was monitoring two frequencies in that area, and getting reports from the six other base stations in the Segher group on the dozen or so frequencies they were listening to. Nothing was happening nearby, but protocol called for Doug to provide warning to those on watch, from references in a book that he was not exactly well versed in. He referred to his cheat-sheet, instead.

“One Peter Five Eight. Repeat, One Peter Five Eight,” Doug said quietly into the microphone.

“One Six One Eight,” was the singular reply a few moments later.

Doug’s warning referred to the Bible verse, ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ The reply was from the book of Matthew chapter sixteen, verse eighteen, ‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’

The distance from the raiders to the Segher Farm and allied farms was not important at the moment. All watchmen were on a heightened level of awareness for any potential raid from any direction. Should potential raiders be in the area, the watchmen would report back with the first part of Samuel, chapter seventeen, verse one, ‘Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle,’ at which point, Doug and the others manning the radios would relay for a general call-up of all armed men and women in the area.

The cheat sheet had a dozen numbers and their usage guidelines. Doug would come to memorize them all.

The string of attacks in Illinois stayed on the east side of the Mississippi, but from what Doug could determine, there were at least twenty separate raids taking place simultaneously. It was impossible to tell though, how successful they were.

At the end of their shift, Doug gathered with Peter, Roeland and Hendrik, as the half-strength day shift, including Catharina’s husband Tom and his oldest, Colin, took up the rifles and fresh radios, and headed out to their observation posts. Cath settled into the listener’s seat in front of the radios, and reviewed the notes that Doug had compiled.

The many farms on the informal radio network had learned over the weeks and months that raiding parties had never attacked any farm in the few hours after sunrise. The admittedly-prejudiced consensus among many of the farm leaders was that the raiders were mostly city people, and it was just ‘too early’ for them. As a result of these defined patterns, the Seghers and any of a hundred other farms reduced their guards and proceeded back to the business of farm operations in the early hours of the day.

The clear, cold night had given way to increasing clouds moving in from the northwest and steady winds. The four men coming off of the nightwatch all felt the first raindrops, softly at first, but steady by the time they reached the porch.

Doug ate a light breakfast without coffee, and planned to head to bed for a few minutes with Julie before she arose. Before he was able to leave the breakfast table though, Cath called to the house on one of the UHF radios used around the Farm. Immediately it became clear that the ‘night raids’ weren’t following the predictable pattern. The ‘night shift’ hurried back to the equipment shed to get more information.

“What’s going on, Cath?” Roeland asked of his older sister as soon as they’d closed the door.

“Three more raids. Smaller attacking groups,” she replied, listening to the continuing reports while taking notes.

“Distance?” Peter asked.

“Salem. Hillsboro. Bonaparte,” Catharina replied.

Roeland explained the significance to Doug: Salem was less than ten miles from the Farm; Hillsboro eight miles; and Bonaparte a spare six miles away. They were too far from each other to be a single raiding party. All were small villages without permanent police presence.

“Size of the raiding parties?” Hendrik asked.

“No more than a dozen. These are different though,” Cath said. “They’re taking people too, not just food or supplies.”

“What? Human trafficking?” Doug asked.

“They’re taking women,” Cath said flatly. “Use your imagination. Doug, would you take over these two?” she said, handing a slip of paper with two scanner ranges scrawled down. “I thought I heard another call, but it went dead before I could hear it. Then these came up.”

“Are all the other farms already on alert?” Hendrik asked.

“Yes,” Cath replied.

Doug picked up another headset and quickly set up the frequency ranges, and was instantly hit with the sound of gunfire. “Another one here,” Doug told them. “Not sure where yet.”

“Keep us informed. We’re going back out,” Peter said. “Roel, aren’t you on duty today?” he asked, referring to Roeland’s deputy sheriff’s responsibilities.

“Not until noon. Twelve shift tonight,” he replied, meaning a twelve hour shift.

Doug waved to them to stop as he listened to the frantic voices.

“Charlie’s. They’re still at Charlie’s! We’ve got to get back across the bridge!” a very scared man yelled into the radio. Doug heard multiple rifles firing in the background.

“Too many! They’re flanking us!” another voice yelled.

“We’re coming. We’re on River Road one mile west,” a third voice said, trying to calm the first two.

“More on the River Road, half mile from the Eldon bridge,” a deep male voice reported, quietly. “Four vehicles. Two pickup trucks with men in the back, two light pickups with shooters in the back.”

“All right, that’s thirty plus,” another calm voice replied. “We can all see what they’ve got. Take out the drivers before they hit that bridge. First unit, push their dismounts from Seventh back to Ninth. Second unit, push them back to the river. And get our people back.”

“They mentioned ‘Eldon’,” Doug said. Hendrik walked up to the map and pointed to a river crossing and a small town, ten or twelve miles west and a little north of the Farm. He placed a red pin at that location, and at the towns that Cath had mentioned.

The radios went silent for a moment before several agonizing screams forced Doug to turn down the volume on what he’d determined to be the attackers’ radio frequency. One of the attackers radios either had an open mic or he was activated by his voice.

“I’ve got both sides of this fight. Attackers and defenders!” Doug flipped the speakers on both of the broadcasts. Catharina listened as well.

“Jesus, I’m hit! Someone help me! I…can’t breathe….” A man shrieked, before his voice transitioned to a wet, choking gurgle.

“Unit one, mop up on the west of the bridge,” one of the defending commanders directed.

“We’ve got dismounts fleeing to the south from the trucks. Pursue?”

“Wound them if they run and kill them if they shoot back, Unit Two,” the commander said with ice in his voice. “They’ve killed our people,” the man spat. “They killed them all.”

A few more minutes of gunfire was heard on the ‘attackers’ radio, with the panting of several men.

“Four prisoners,” one of the defenders said to his commander.

“Count of enemy dead,” the commander asked without inflection.

“Fourteen this side of the bridge. Twenty six on the south side.”

“You find a leader?” the commander asked.

“Sorry sir, he took three rounds to the head.”

“Load them up and bring them all in,” was the reply. “Reserve Unit, police up the vehicles, weapons, ammunition and equipment. Stage it as discussed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damned efficient,” Roeland said. “I’m not sure who that is but I’d like to find out.”

“We need to get out to our positions,” Hendrik said. “Cath, are your radios…” she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“Yes. Still going,” she said, not raising her head.

Arie, Maria and Julie entered the equipment shed as Hendrik reached for the door.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked. Doug stopped for a moment and smiled at her, thinking to himself just how lucky he was to have found her. Hendrik filled them in as Roeland and Peter picked up two matching AR-15’s and vests. The Farm had eight identical rifles of the type, along with load-bearing vests with extra magazines, a pocket for one of the small tactical radios, and a chest-mounted holster for a .45 caliber handgun. Other contents of each vest included a map of the area, a pocket for a small first aid kit, and a packet of beef jerky, dried fruit and nuts. Other watch equipment was contained in a small pack that each watchman took out to their assigned observation point.

The frequencies that Doug had been monitoring went quiet as the minutes passed. He assumed that the defenders in Eldon had completed their work, and were tending to their wounded and dead.

“Father, we need to talk with the Weerstand,” Cath told Arie.

“Why, child? What do you find?” he replied.

“These attackers. They come from nowhere. They come from within. They are already among these places. They did not travel from the east or the south, they sprung up from within.”

“How do you know this?”

“There were no vehicles involved until the attacks were well underway. They came in afoot. Only after they had attacked did the vehicles arrive. The vehicles were used for retreat—to take what they had stolen.”

“They did this where?” Arie asked as Maria looked on sternly.

“Salem, Hillsboro and Bonaparte,” Cath replied.

“And probably Eldon. Same pattern,” Doug added, realizing what Cath was saying. “They must be moving in at night, or only moving at night.”

“There is something I do not understand though,” Catharina said, making marks on a small folded map. “In Bonaparte and Hillsboro, the trucks. They left behind some of their people. They left them to fight for themselves.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Julie said. “You don’t leave your people behind.”

Doug wondered. “Unless those people don’t matter to you.”

“What?” Julie asked.

“Were those men worth less than what or who they took?” Doug asked.

No one replied for many seconds. Maria finally answered. “People don’t do that. You bring your people home.”

“You are applying your belief system to people that do not necessarily believe in the same things, Maria,” Doug said, before turning to Cath. “Cath, was there heavy fighting in those cases?”

“No. That is what I found disturbing. There was little fighting at the end. They just drove off. The people in Hillsboro then hunted down the stragglers. The others in Bonaparte are still chasing them.”

“Why this? Why now?” Julie asked.

“Something bigger’s going on,” Doug answered. “Maybe part of this New Republic business. I don’t know.”

“We call the Weerstand immediately. Catharina, make the call,” Arie said with resignation. “We will meet today. Here, for luncheon.”

Maria nodded and tugged Julie along back to the house. “We’ve work to do, now.”

“Arie, what can the Weerstand do?” Doug asked.

“We go hunting, Douglas. We do not wait to be preyed upon. The fight will come to them, and we will bring it.”

Doug leaned back in the chair for a moment before responding, considering what Arie had just said. “Arie, the men I met…”

“Are far more capable than they might appear,” Arie replied before Doug could finish. “Do not underestimate their abilities based on your eyes, for they deceive you.”

“The men I met are farmers. Business owners…”

“Yes. They fight for their homes, their wives and children and brothers and sisters. There are men in the Weerstand that have fought for the United States, but remember there are also men who have fought in South Africa to defend their farms, and lost family and property and generations of heritage and ended up leaving that place. In the words of one, this is but a tactical challenge that can be met, matched, and defeated. Come now. There is much work to do,” Arie said, turning to the door.

“Cath, are you OK on the radios now?” Doug asked.

“Yes. Elisabeth will be here soon. She can help if things get busy.”

“Catharina, please provide estimates on the locations of these raiders and where you think they’re heading, ja?”

“Yes, papa. Soon now.”

Doug and Arie walked on the brick pathway to the house as the rain picked up. “You good with a rifle, Douglas?”

“I’d regard myself as ‘adequate’. No more than that.”

“Jacob will spend some time with you in the small barn. He can hone your skills, ja?”

“That would be a good idea.”

“’Time grows short, along with our days’, my father once told me,” Arie said as they reached the house. “We must make good of them.”

Distance, Chapter 48

2012-12-23T20:47:00.004-08:00

Friday evening,

September First

The Segher Farm

Thursday’s activities in Fairfield had stretched late into the day, including a prolonged visit to the National Guard center to review the files sent him; and the review of the stolen goods after they were processed by the police department. Doug noted that the hard drives from the digital security recorders were missing, and mentioned this to the police. Now, in the early evening of September First, he was happy to help clean one of the smaller barns and just think.

Julie, Maria and the balance of the Segher family women were finishing up a large-scale peach and apricot canning project at Peter and Molly’s house. Doug asked Arie for something he could do alone and in peace, just to think.

“Much on your mind, ya?” Arie replied, looking at Doug for a long moment. “I’ve just the place.”

The ‘small’ barn formerly housed sixty or so dairy cows, all sold off the previous year as the fourth official ‘recession’ in eight years began and the real collapse started. With the endless list of more important things on the farm needing attention, the clean out of this particular barn had waited, until today. Doug worked with minimal lighting, which allowed him a narrow focus for both his work and his mind.

The e-dispatches forwarded to him by his secretary were encrypted and only portable if sent to his government-provided laptop, or viewable as read-only at the nearly deserted Guard facility—‘print’ and ‘save’ functions had been disabled. He hadn’t thought of bringing the laptop with him, and as a result spent more than three hours reading the background material and ‘position statements’ provided by Lorraine.

After reading the many files provided—from many other departments, not just Food and Drug—Doug’s opinion on the New Republic changed from the organization being a minor distraction to what seemed like a major debacle in the making. From the President on down, the statements didn’t seem to take the New Republic voices or actions with a level of serious consideration—indeed, they were dismissed as dope-smoking Communist freeloaders at best; America-hating parasites at worst. When the ‘official’ communiqués were viewed in timeline-order, the initial dispatches were serious, mindful of the consequences, filled with carefully chosen words, and obviously were put together by people who’d thought out the problem. The later dispatches in the stream of communications—even those allegedly written by a previously ‘thoughtful’ senior staff person—were shallow, name calling, sycophantic responses mirroring the opinions of close friends and political appointees of the President. Almost universally, the Vice President’s staff rejected the position that the Administration was proposing, using very strong language. Doug thought, as he closed the last file in the series, that either the Vice President would be asked to resign or that the ‘popular uprising’ as the FBI had called it, would spread in the face of no meaningful resistance.

Doug’s specific orders remain unchanged, but now had increased urgency to ‘ensure regulatory safeguards remain in place.’ It seemed to him that the Federal Government was utterly unprepared for the level of popular opposition against cutbacks in Federal programs including pensions, Medicare and Medicaid, farm, technology and fuel subsidies. These had now festered for months, after years of ‘austerity programs’ that had delayed scheduled cost-of-living increases and ‘mandated’ growth. States, after cutbacks of Federal funding proved themselves unable to continue the uncounted mandated programs. Millions of people ‘slipping through the safety net’ were now the constituency of the New Republic. The currency devaluations, the elimination of recognizable currency—the former ‘nickel’, now being made from an alloy was one of the changes—all worked against the Federal Government and the shreds of remaining confidence.

Doug had met with Arie, Peter, Roeland and Maria and Julie over dinner, and provided them a look inside of the Federal Government that only a relative handful of people would hear of. None of what Doug said really came as a surprise, but there was seemingly a feeling of resignation about the path that the Nation was on.

Late into the night, Doug lay awake in the darkened bedroom, Julie soundly sleeping at his side.

Early Friday morning, they’d had been roused by Roeland, in his deputy sheriff uniform and body armor.

“Doug, you’re needed in Fairfield. Pronto,” Roeland said quietly. Julie slept soundly.

Shaking the fog from his head, Doug finally figured out where he was. “What?” he whispered. Roeland motioned him to come out of the bedroom. It was near sunrise, he noted as he quietly closed the door. A beautiful, cloudless Iowa sky.

“Your suspect died overnight, according to my sources. The Fairfield P.D. has no idea why. Might be a good idea to get up there and find out anything you can. Be a little proactive on it,” Roeland said, in effect saying, ‘eliminate yourself as a conspirator in his death.’

“Uh, was he alone? Did someone kill him?” Doug asked as they moved into the kitchen, where Maria had just started to make boterkoek—Dutch coffee cake.

“No idea. Probably not a great idea for me to be asking around about it,” Roeland said. “Might be a good idea for you to get to town by say, seven-thirty or eight.”

“All right. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“That’s about all I know. Rumblings in the East, though. Lotta shortwave chatter about this New Republic bullcrap,” Roeland said, cleaning up his language in front of his mother.

“Today’s supposed to be their Independence Day,” Doug said to no one in particular.

“Yeah. But will there be a ‘shot heard round the world?’”

Doug dressed quietly, and kissed the snoozing Julie good morning, explaining the situation. She was out of bed immediately.

“I’m going with you,” she stated flatly. Doug knew there wasn’t any point in trying to change her mind, and for that matter, figured that there wasn’t any reason to try. Ten minutes later, they were in the Jeep and had cleared the front gate.

“Do you…think that Regent killed this guy?” Julie asked.

“’Rule one: Kill the killer’, I read somewhere. It’s too pat. Too convenient for him to die in police custody,” Doug said, touching one of the radio buttons to scan. “I don’t know where anything’s going. Just when I start to think I know where I’m going, I get broadsided.”

“You’re off balance,” Julie said. “Maybe you’re being deliberately kept off balance.”

“Huh?” Doug said, puzzled.

“In my former life, I saw lots of gamesmanship where an employer would pit one employee against another, stir the pot, create some sort of controversy to hide his real intentions—keeping his staff low-paid. I saw the same thing where employees would kiss up to the boss in his presence, while looting the till through all kinds of creative means,” Julie said. “Most of the time, I could prove it, given time and authorization. Maybe you’re being played.”

Doug didn’t know what to say.

“What would be the motivation, you’re wondering,” Julie said, trying to get comfortable in the passenger seat.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“Your ties to Des Moines are cut. Your ties to Fairfield are cut. People you knew through Regent are dead. Who would stand to gain?” Julie asked.

“I don’t know,” Doug said, turning north toward Fairfield.

“Someone who wants you to go a different direction. If they’d have wanted you dead, you’d be gone already. So someone sees you as an asset, not a liability. For now,” she said with ‘that tone’ of voice.

“For now,” Doug repeated, his mind now going a completely different direction. Doug slowed as he drove through the little hamlet of Birmingham. A few people looked at the FDA label on the side of the Jeep and scowled.

A few minutes later, Doug drove up the driveway to the wrecked house to show Julie the place.

“My God. You weren’t exaggerating,” she said.

“No, I was not,” Doug replied, turning the Jeep around, and heading back down the driveway.

Fairfield was a bit livelier than Birmingham, but just barely. Virtually all of the marginal business enterprises had long since closed, leaving only those that really were ‘important’ to the public. In the case of Fairfield, this meant a few grocery stores, hardware, hunting and farm supply stores, the library, machine and welding shops, clinics and second hand stores. Franchises of national restaurants and retails had vanished, including their signs. Barter was more common than either local scrip or ‘dollars’ or the rare precious-metals transaction, but trust weighed heavy in any transaction. The Segher’s had schooled Doug on the evolution of the local economy over dinner, the night before.

Doug’s Government Jeep was viewed with suspicion as he drove through Fairfield…the FDA logo drawing many stares.

“You should travel in something that doesn’t draw so much attention,” Julie said.

“Yeah. The big Federal logo doesn’t really go with my outfit,” Doug replied, trying to lighten the mood.

“I’m not kidding,” Julie said seriously.

“I’m not either,” Doug persisted. “The whole ‘For Official Business Only’ thing cramps my style,” he said, pulling into the police department.

Doug parked in the same spot, and he and Julie held hands as they entered the building.

“Officer Schwartz,” Doug said, introducing Julie. “This is my wife Julie.”

“Ma’am,” Schwartz said, looking at Julie over the top of his glasses. “Mister Peterson, can you account for your whereabouts since you were here last?”

“He’s been at the farm, with my family. Including Deputy Sheriff Roeland Segher,” Julie replied. Schwartz nodded and noted Julie’s statement.

“I understand that the suspect is dead?” Doug asked.

“Yeah. Died in his cell last evening. Window to the outside was penetrated, but we’re not sure by what. No visible wound on the body. No one heard a thing.”

“Have you identified him?”

“No. State medical examiner should have the autopsy results back to us next week, unless there are drugs involved. Takes quite a bit longer. You wanna pick up your property?” Schwartz asked. “Can’t prosecute the dead.”

“Uh, I guess I could,” Doug said.

“Gimme a few minutes and I’ll take you back to the Property Room.”

“Sure.”

Good to his word, Officer Schwartz summoned them down the hall after getting an even older man to cover the dispatch radios.

“You gonna be able to I.D. what’s yours out of this stuff?” he asked, looking at a clipboard. “There’s five pages of stuff inventoried here.”

“If I can’t, I won’t take it. As is, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with any of this in any regard,” Doug replied.

“Fair enough. Here’s the checklist—just initial there in the left hand column that you’ve retrieved it.”

Twenty minutes later, Doug and Julie had finished loading five boxes into the back of the FDA Jeep and were headed back to the Farm. Julie flipped on the radio in time to hear the last tones of the Emergency Broadcast Signal.

“This is the Voice of the New Republic, transmitting over the Emergency Broadcast System. The New Republic has accessed this system for a special broadcast from Montauk, New York, where Senator Cynthia Blackburn and Representative David Abdul Muhsin. Friends, I give you Cynthia Blackburn,” a game-show style male voice announced.

“What the Hell?” Doug asked. He pulled to the side of the empty road to listen to the weak transmission.

“We are here on the dawn of a new day. This day brings us the promise of true social justice for the people, the end of a corrupt and collapsing regime geared only toward the profit of a few at the expense of the rest of us.

We are here to bring commonsense solutions to millions of people who have been disproportionately oppressed. We are reaching out with a message of hope to those embattled masses. Your fair share is coming. The extremist right-wing leadership that has driven us into the ground will pass away, and we will rise to lead. We are not in denial that the mean spirited practices and outright domination practiced by the leaders of the United States of America is the best thing for this world. They are plainly not! The violence that they’ve inflicted on millions must end. We mean to see that it happens now!

It is time for us to rise up, to throw off the shackles placed on us. It is time for positive outcomes and shared values. It is time for sound governance through protection of our environment. It is time for proper taxation of corporations and individuals who choose to work outside the bounds of fairness. It is time that the burdens of unfair debt are thrown off, especially those placed on the young through the Federal Student Loan system. There are so many marginalized and underserved people in this nation that strive for a vibrant new community! We call on you to help—to repurpose your lives and the lives of others to serve all in the struggle for equality and to work within the global community! We will no longer tolerate corporations disenfranchising the worker--we will bring our demands to these corporations and see that they are satisfied. The globalist system has failed us; it is time for us to see that we don’t fail each other. We are taking this continent--we are remaking it! Their failed policies will no longer be tolerated and we have the power to end them and put in place new systems that recognize the value of the creative; that reward those in need and that benefit our culture! We declare our Independence. Today is the day of the New Republic!” Blackburn said, as thunderous applause rose.

“And now, Representative Mushin,” the gameshow voice announced.

“On behalf of the many cultures here today, I thank you for your time,” Mushin began.

“We are here to create, not to destroy. To unite, and not divide. These are not just words, they are true commitments to equality for the most abled, and for the least. We are here to see that proper investments are made in the future of the people, that the emerging consensus of the past few months grows and thrives. That we empower those around us and that we end the cycles of violence and poverty and division reinforced by the United States on the people of the world. The New Republic is founded on these principles. We are here to give voice. We are here to listen. We are here to grow support for those policies of fairness and investments in the future of our people. Our nation’s children and indeed, the people of our nation live within and outside the physical borders of the United States of America, for our nation reaches beyond mere physical lines on maps. We have brothers and sisters in Africa. In Europe. In the embattled Middle East. We call on our brothers and sisters to join us. It is a new day; it is our day!”

“Certainly full of themselves, aren’t they?” Julie said as more applause flooded the radio. Doug didn’t have a chance to answer.

“We are poised to…” the broadcast was terminated and static filled the airwaves. Doug punched the ‘scan’ button on the radio, and found all frequencies nothing but an even level of static.

“Big Brother didn’t like that show, it appears,” Doug said. “Let’s get home.”

“What do you think that means?” Julie asked.

“Civil war maybe? I don’t really know. What would this ‘New Republic’ use for an army? For weapons? It’s not like they can seize stuff laying around—most of it is in Mexico.”

“Have you heard of their…territories?” Julie asked. “Are they just in New England?”

“No, they’re spread out, but from what I know it’s not like they’re consolidating their areas of control,” Doug said, getting the Jeep back on the road. “One of my contacts with Regent said that the company was involved in, ‘efforts to distract and destabilize current leadership models’. That tells me that they’re part of the New Republic. Am I wrong?” he asked Julie. She sat there, unspeaking.

“Which means,” Doug continued, “that I’m an agent for someone that wants to overthrow the United States Government.” A chill ran through him. He was on the same ‘side’ as those people on the radio. “Good God.”

“You have to get out. You have to get out of Regent and out of the FDA,” Julie said in pleading voice. “You have to, Doug.”

“I know. But I can’t just ‘not show up.’ I need to complete this assignment and resign. Then we need to disappear,” he said, thinking about what that really meant.

“What will Regent do?” Julie said, reading his thoughts.

“I have no idea,” he said, lying. He knew perfectly well. They’d kill him.

They arrived at the Farm a half-hour later, and were immediately directed back into the equipment shed, and the giant metal cage within. Jake Segher, dressed in coveralls, waved them inside. He pulled the huge door closed behind them.

“Let’s see what they’ve done to your rig,” Jake said flatly.

“Who?” Julie asked.

“Oh, I dunno. Just the global conspiracy.”

“Not funny, Jake,” she replied.

“Not really meant to be. Contact at any time means that something could be added to, or taken away from, your person or your vehicle. So we check to see,” Jake said, picking up some sort of hand-held scanner. “Big batch of stuff in the back. Yours?”

“These were stolen from my house up north. A few things that belonged to the Kliest’s as well,” Doug said. “A half dozen radios.”

“All right, we’ll start with these then,” Jake said, opening up the hatch, and holding the scanner over the boxes. “Well, now,” he said, looking at a small LCD screen on the scanner. “Someone’s added a few cookies to your cookie jar.”

“What?”

“Something here is actively transmitting. Weak, but it’s there. Something else, here, too,” Jake said, brow furrowed.

“I don’t understand,” Doug said.

“Think of this as a rotating transmitter,” Jake said. “Something in there answered back. Whatever is in there responded with a data stream when it was hit with the initiating frequency.”

“Can you…tell what was sent?” Julie asked.

“Not a chance in Hell,” Jake said. “Not without a supercomputer and the correct programming algorithm.”

“Who’d have that kind of technology?”

“The National Security Agency, for one,” Jake said. “Doug, can you positively identify each piece of equipment here as yours or your neighbors?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure won’t cut it. Positive ID is definitive.”

“I can ID 80% with certainty,” Doug replied, initially irritated but understanding what Jake was getting at.

“Dig out your stuff, put it on that bench over there.”

“Doug, I’m going to go inside. I’m late for my nap,” Julie said, yawning.

“I’ll let you know what we find,” he said, giving her a quick kiss and a hug.

Doug pulled out the electronics and placed them on the copper-covered workbench, where Jake immediately ensured they weren’t transmitting anything, or responding to any signal from his scanner.

“That’s all of the stuff that I can ID as coming from my place. The rest might be mine or Augie Kliest’s.”

“OK. One piece at a time, on the table to the left.”

Doug started with a ham radio that had belonged to Augie, a big Yaesu transceiver, the FT2000. Jake scanned it as he moved it from the Jeep to the workbench.

“That’s one of them—it’s transmitting when hit with a certain freq,” Jake said.

Doug pulled out several other items, including digital video recorders, cameras, Internet routers and a laptop. Nothing responded to Jake’s scanner. The last items were a pair of Sony AM radios and a cable TV box.

“Cable box. Put it over there near the Yaesu. The Sony’s are clean.”

“What do we do now?” Doug asked.

“I do some surgery here and see what I can find. You go take care of your better half and see if Arie needs any help. He’s working on a new woodshed out back of the house. There’s twelve cord of wood back there that needs to be stacked before the bad weather sets in.”

“Thanks, Jake. I appreciate your expertise with this stuff. We’d never have known…”

“Most people have never known. There’s more of this stuff out there than anyone realizes. And you’re quite welcome. Anything I can do to put a wrench in the works, and I’ll do it.”

The late summer morning was growing hotter, but many of the leaves had already started to yellow with the coming of autumn, much earlier, Maria had said, than she’d ever seen. Doug walked back toward the house, looking across the large garden, to the empty fields to the west. Nothing had been planted in any of the fields, as far as he could see.

“Pretty bleak, ya?” Arie said, coming toward Doug.

“Yes, it is,” he replied.

“Fallow year. Think of it as a fallow year.”

“Yeah, that’s the bright side,” Doug said, feeling a little depressed at the view.

“There’s another bright side. There’s no food to be found for others to take. So they go elsewhere.”

“Is that what you had planned? I mean, you and…the others. The Weerstand.”

Arie looked at Doug with a glint in his eye. “Some learn from history. Far too many don’t, are instead rewarded by death. We do not intend to be among the latter. Come now. I have a hammer and nails and some tin that need your undivided.”

And now, a word from our sponsor.

2012-11-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

Over the past week, I've had numerous emails regarding the outcome of the election and things that we might be facing. Below is a reply that I've sent to one of my readers, expanded a bit from that original response.

Feel free to pass on this at anytime--the following has nothing to do with Distance or the prior three novels... these are just some of the rambling thoughts of the author. However, I doubt anyone would believe the situation we find ourselves, if it were in a novel.

From a reader:

I would wonder what your take is on what is happening right now. You have an election that appears rigged, you have 42 + states with petitions to secede at the white house, and of course economic collapse is knocking on the front door.

My reply:

Needless to say I was disappointed by the election. Not that I'm a huge Romney fan, but I thought that there were enough people out there that were awake and paying attention to flip Obama out of office. You cannot win an election when the debate moderators, the media, most other nations, and the existing administration are against you. Just cannot happen. I was hopeful until 7PM, Pacific Time. After that though, I poured two fingers of Scotch.

Obviously, there are enough people awake and 'on the dole' to realize that they've got a very good thing going with the current administration remaining in place, and don't see the need or have the desire to change it. The "47%" that Romney mentioned didn't vote for him; he was exactly right in his comments. There were too many insurmountables for him to beat. He couldn't even win his own state.

So, things have tipped over. There is no going back at this point. With the Senate still in D control; the House now willing to capitulate on anything Obama wants, since the R-party is now so obviously out of touch with the electorate that they have to do what Obama wants or they become even more irrelevant than they are now. They are blustering, but they'll cave soon enough. They weren't just spanked last weak. They were horsewhipped. I don't know what the R party is anymore, let alone who their leader is, what their goals and ideology represent--any of it.

The R party needs to remake itself to listen to what the voters want, or it will lose the House in 2014, and that is a very real possibility. The R party leadership has disenfranchised so many people that they'll be lucky to exist at all in eight years. (Don't get me started on what they did to R. Paul at the convention). So what do the voters want? Everything, with no threat of ever paying for it.

So what does that mean for us? D-Party, R-Party, same outcome, but one side wears better suits and doesn't put on phony accents when speaking to working people.

So, among other things that we're facing:

The Fiscal Cliff: I expect that either they'll kick the can down the road through a continuing resolution or we go off the cliff as the R party still remains out of touch and stands fast for whatever it is they believe in. The perception is that they are for the preservation of wealth for the wealthy. The facts be damned: No one cares that the rich people pay far more than their fair share in taxes and millions of others pay nothing or in fact get paid for breathing. No one who voted for Obama seems to care one iota that FedGov hasn't had an actual budget since GWB's last effort. Can you go for four years without balancing your checkbook or at least looking at the bank statement? I know that I can't. Tax the rich 100%, and you still don't get there. Tax them 200% and you still don't get there.

We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. There is no way that anyone wants to fix a spending problem. It's far too painful. But it's necessary.

Israel/Iran: Either Israel goes it alone or they threaten Iran with both the assassination of their entire leadership tier, or they turn several parts of Iran into a glassy parking lot. Either way, it won't be long before things Are Decided. Of course, I Could Be Wrong. They are completely capable to do this all on their own and without permission or support from the U.S. As a matter of observation, they're better off not telling anyone anything until they're on their return leg of the mission. It's not like the U.S. leadership has proven itself competent any any aspect of foreign policy or covert actions for a long time now...

UN Small Arms Treaty: Coming to a nation near you. This could be an exec order, approved by the Senate, crafted and rammed through the same way that Obamacare was. Don't expect a bunch of hearings on it, or expect it to follow legal pathways. Enforcement: No need to ban the weapons, just tax the crap out of ammunition; pound the manufacturers with all kinds of non-compliable compliance mandates; ban imports and exports of any kind. I visited a Cabelas over the weekend--There wasn't a black gun, magazine or any quality 5.56 left in the store by the end of the day. AK's were going too, along with 7.62x39. Lots of talk about either capitalizing on the weapons or being ready for seizures, one boat-tail round at a time at high velocity. It looked a **whole lot** like a Black Friday sale, but with much more determination.

Economy: Despite the happy-talk, it doesn't matter what Obama does or doesn't do. Europe's going down hard, and when they go, we go. Might be soon, might be a year...dunno. Read Karl Denninger's site (The Market Ticker) when you can, or daily, including the comments section. These are professional traders, and they see risks and failure where we see nothing. I'm not in that business, so I don't see the danger signs that they do. I read the site, but seldom post. I treat that site like I do The Drudge Report. If you want to know the news before the MSM reports on it, you need to be ahead of the MSM. It is not difficult.

Read this: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2753128 That particular post explains the nature of exponential spending and debt accumulation. You don't know how bad it is until you are nearly out of breathable air. Scary as Hell when you think about it, especially in light of where we are post-election.

Money: QE to Infinity will continue--and accelerate the destruction of our money. Europe will go first, meaning there is a flight to the perception of "quality": They will run to the dollar as other currencies die; then the dollar will go too. Things you need will continue to get more expensive--food, fuel, etc., but prices will not climb steadily and the .gov will leverage that as 'recovery'. Bumpy, unpredictable, and drawn out for far longer than would be reasonable. When it goes though, it will go very quickly. Think: Hours not days. Silver and gold gyrate a bunch. The old maxim applies: If you don't have it in your hands, you don't have it.

Obamacare: Gets fully implemented, full-throttle. Private insurance companies will be driven out of existence. Health care quality plummets, and prices skyrocket. The Death Panel won't be needed, because simple delays in getting needed treatment will kill people....just like Great Britain. If you need a medical procedure done, get it done sooner rather than later. If you have insurance at a reasonable price now, you won't have it in a year--you might have insurance, but you'll be paying for much more of it (assuming your employer pays a portion of it now). ALSO, expect massive terminations of full time employees and hiring of part time employees, none of which will be eligible for employer-sponsored medical insurance. Expect all kinds of current fringe benefits to be eliminated as a result, causing further downward pressure on the workers. You're going to see a massive reduction in employers, as people figure out that it's just not worth it to work hard to pay the government more taxes and end up with much less at the end of the day. This may be the price of Austerity. I think it's more the cost of bloated government.

ScandalGate and Fallout: An ambassador--the second highest envoy a country can have, after the President--is allowed to be killed, when numerous options were available to save him; and after dozens of failures of security were allowed to happen. Protocol was completely ignored in multiple agencies and at multiple levels, including in the Situation Room where BHO was present and ordered 'Stand Down'. No one goes to jail or is punished.

Fast and Furious: Weapons were supplied by the FedGov to Mexican drug gangs, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands of deaths. No one goes to jail or is punished.

CIA Compromised: The head of the CIA is banging his biographer, and isn't smart enough to use widely available, easily accessible and highly secure encryption means to express his need to get some from his mistress. The mistress is allowed access to all kinds of classified environments and probably information, as that kind of thing happens in the afterglow. Mistress talks, another woman gets involved, and Petraeus' succeeding General in Afghanistan decides to get involved to the tune of thousands, if not tens of thousands of emails. An investigating FBI agent gets overly involved and tries to start a relationship with one of the women, including communicating topless pictures of himself sent to her. This throws dirt on the CIA, the FBI, probably to a smaller degree State, and by extension, Obama, but he is far above the fray. Look for Petraeus and his general-buddy to be retired in disgrace, and word to come out that both were leading Bush-men in the big scheme of things. No one goes to jail or is punished.

As a result of the shiny entertainment of a married four-star general getting all horizontal with a much younger woman, and the accessory collapse of several other major careers, Benghazi and the weapons smuggling is forgotten; F&F is forgotten, the CIA is reformed with new, Statist-approved leadership, as is the FBI. No one goes to jail or is punished.

All this proves is that the most of the upper echelons of leadership in this nation are utterly corrupt.

Regulations: Expect many more restrictive, private-business-unfriendly regulations to come your way. Expect there to be increasing restrictions on use of any kind of fuel: Wood burning, diesel, gasoline, whatever through a Carbon Tax. Expect environmental 'Agenda 21' stuff to grow quickly. Expect both parties to be sponsors as a way to seriously increase revenue.

Courts: We're going to see more radical Supreme Court judges, and a vast increase in radical judges in lower courts. This isn't even on the radar screen right now. Scalia, Ginsburg, Kennedy, two Reagan appointees and a Clinton appointee, will all likely be replaced with three Obama appointees. If this happens, this will be the largest bunch of USSC judges appointed by a single President since Eisenhower. Think about that one for a long time.

If you've read Asimov, it's time to build your version of the Great Library of Trantor. If you've read Rand, it's time to re-read Atlas Shrugged and prepare accordingly. If you haven't read either or can't stand Rand's endless monologues, you still have some time to catch up, but don't waste time. If you're unfamiliar with any of the aforementioned, research the purposes and functions of medieval monasteries. They weren't all about religion and were designed to exist for many lifetimes.

I think we are in for a very rough time ahead.

Distance, Chapter 47

2012-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

Wednesday evening,

August Thirtieth

The Segher Farm

Roeland’s men went over the Jeep with the proverbial fine toothed comb, and found no electronic or paper documentation that might be expected to be retrieved by Regent operatives along Doug’s planned route. Only by accident did one of the cousins discover a second enclosure, adjacent to the Jeep’s powertrain control module that didn’t appear to belong. A wiring harness was present, wrapped up with electrical tape that looked factory enough, tucked behind the windshield washer reservoir under the hood. The silver module didn’t quite look the same as the real PCM though.

Dinner was simple but sumptuous, with Julie holding his hand throughout the entire meal, a smile on her face. After dinner the men had headed either to patrol, to bed (for those on patrol after midnight), or to the equipment shed for work on the Jeep. Doug watched as the men carefully removed the fake module, placing it on a workbench below a bank of radios within the cage.

“Stock power and data connections for a PCM. But not hooked up,” Jake Segher said, glasses halfway down his nose. “Crack it open?” he asked.

“Yep,” Roeland said. “Any marks or seals on the case?”

“Negative,” Jake replied.

“Let’s see what we find inside.”

Jake took a tee-handled tool from a rack and quickly removed several hex screws from the case, followed by the silver cover.

“Well, that’s easy,” Jake said. “Six flash drives, all nicely wrapped up and labeled for each location. Wanna bet they’re not encrypted?”

“How’re you going to find out without triggering a date code event?” Doug asked. All of Regent’s files were proprietary, and any access, even to just ‘peek’ at a file, resulted in a modification date embedded in the file.

“Trivialities,” Jake replied, not looking up from the case and its contents.

“Jake has a background in these things. Best not to ask any more about it,” Roeland said.

“If those files are compromised I’m blown,” Doug replied.

“I contracted for the National Security Agency for three years; Department of Defense two years before that as an information assurance officer. I’m very, very good at what I do,” Jake said, not raising his gaze from the computer enclosure. “And these are not flash drives. These are covering up the real data on the board underneath them. There’s a mini-USB port on this board. The flash drives are probably explosive charges. That one on the left there is a little electro-magnetic charge to wipe the data.”

“What?” Doug said in surprise.

“Self-destruct. Not enough to blow up your car. Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I’ll need to get my gear and bring it here. This is a fairly sophisticated piece of work for the civilian world. I can have the data retrieved and this back together by morning.”

“I don’t really need the Jeep until…”

“No, you need this tomorrow. You said you’d be in Fairfield in the morning, right? Told the police?” Jake said, still studying the case, the fake flash drives and the circuit board beneath.

“Yes,” Doug replied.

“That commitment you made to file a report, and any other communications made mentioning your name have already been communicated electronically. Which means that your corporation knows it already. They don’t expect you to drive a different vehicle I would expect, so if you show up and file a report in Fairfield, your vehicle would show up there. You’ll gas up there, use a credit card, call your office and report what’s happened to your house. There may well be some electronic track that can ping off of this,” Jake said, “and report back to the mother ship.”

“How can that possibly be true?” Doug said. “They’d have to monitor everything all the time.”

“It’s not that difficult for an entity with means and desire,” Jake said, looking over the top of his glasses. “Believe me. Child’s play when the cell network was in operation—and lots of the infrastructure is still intact, despite what you’re being told. The bandwidth is being used for other things,” he looked up as Julie entered the equipment shed. “It appears you have an appointment with your wife, Doug.”

“Yes, I do,” Doug said, looking at his curvy bride. “See you in the morning?”

“Most likely.”

Doug took Julie’s hand and closed the man-door behind them, greeted by the setting half-moon, just above the trees in the east.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Doug asked.

“Very nearly as much as I love you. But not quite,” Julie said as they sat on the edge of an ancient wooden table between the shed and the back door of the farm house. “I have missed you every single day and had a lump in my throat just thinking about you. I don’t want you going back. I want you to stay.”

Doug paused for a moment before speaking. “I don’t want to go back. I just don’t know how not to. I don’t know what to do next. People I know…knew…are dead. I think my company killed them. How am I supposed to behave, knowing that? What am I supposed to do?” Doug found himself sobbing, finally giving in to the pent-up grief and months of stress.

Long hours later, well after moonset, they went to their bedroom and relieved pent-up stresses of another nature, in much more intimate and pleasurable ways.

Thursday morning,

August Thirty-first,

Fairfield, Iowa

Doug pulled into the concrete parking lot of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office, parking next to concrete barriers that were placed to keep vehicles away from the building. After parking his reassembled Jeep, he was met by an officer at the entry.

“Business here today, sir?”

“Name’s Doug Peterson. I need to make a report.”

“The Kliest murders. You’re on the list. Carrying?”

“Huh?”

“Are you carrying a weapon, sir?”

“Oh. No, actually. Not on me.”

“See Officer Schwartz. Second door on the left, down that hallway.”

“Thanks,” Doug said. It was only then that he noticed the second officer, inside a ballistic enclosure with a shotgun on top of the counter, facing the door. Half the lights in the entry lobby were out, burned out or damaged.

Doug made his way to the assigned office, and knocked on the door jamb. Officer Schwartz was a much older man, Doug guessed well past seventy. He removed a headset from his right ear, keeping the left one in place. A haphazard collection of radios were to Schwartz’s right.

“Sit,” Officer Schwartz said, covering the mouthpiece to his headset. “Be with you in a minute.”

“Dispatch to two four tango, proceed on assigned patrol route.”

One of the speakers in the radio bank replied, “Two four tango,” and the transmission ended.

“What can I do for you?” the officer asked.

“I need to make a report. I live near….I lived across the road from the Kliests.”

“You Peterson then?” Schwartz asked with a critical eye.

“Yes, sir.”

“They hit your place too, then I take it?”

“Yes. There is, though more to it than that,” Doug said.

“Go on,” the officer said, leaning back in his chair a little.

“Mr. Kliest worked for a real estate firm, which was affiliated with the company that I worked for, Regent. They’re in the food business—Regent Performance. Wholesale, distributing, the works,” Doug said.

“You think there’s a tie-in?”

“I don’t know. Might be coincidence.”

“You’re working for the Federal government now?” Schwartz asked, looking at the paperwork in the Kliest’s file, with Doug’s business card.

“Yes. Food and Drug Administration. Based out of the Denver Federal Zone.”

“What was stolen from your home?”

“Some things were removed by my wife—she’s doubling-up with some family friends. There were a number of items that were stolen. Mostly electronics,” Doug said, not mentioning the security system. “I guess what surprised me was the destruction.”

“Deputy Earle said it looked like explosives. That right?”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s not like I’ve seen grenades go off before. The house is all but destroyed,” Doug replied. “The big generator out back…looked like they melted it. No idea how they did that.”

“All right, Mister Peterson. Here’s our packet for reporting stolen property. If you’d fill this out, we’ll see what we can do,” Schwartz said, with a ‘cold chance in Hell’ tone of voice. “You can use that meeting room across the hall if you’d like.”

“OK. Thanks. Is there a public phone I can use?” Doug asked.

“Need to check in with Denver? I hear they’re all in a dither today,” Schwartz said as one of the radios came to life.

“What’s that?”

“Those nutjobs back East. Call themselves the ‘New Republic.’ Decided to declare their independence. I hear it’s all over the television, where they have television. Guess the President’s called some emergency meeting or other.”

Doug involuntarily moved back in shock, and caught himself. “I…hadn’t heard. Radio’s been off.”

“There’s a phone in that meeting room. Dial nine for an outside line,” Schwartz said. “Close the door if you need privacy. That room’s pretty quiet, but not soundproof.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Doug replied. He gathered up the papers and moved numbly across to the empty room, closing the door behind him.

He fished out the small, leather-bound notebook with his contact information and the security codes to gain access to the Federal communications network. Within a few moments, he was connected to his secretary in Denver.

“Lorraine? This is Doug.”

“Hi, Doug. You looking for the Deputy Director?”

“Thought it might be a good idea to check in. How’re things there?”

“Unevenly distributed,” she replied. A career civil servant, she’d seen all kinds of chaos over the years.

“What was that?” Doug replied.

“When it hit the fan first thing this morning, the output was not evenly distributed. For a change, the folks upstairs got the lions’ share.”

“That’s pretty good,” Doug said with a grin. “Director in?”

“No, actually. Very few of the folks upstairs are in. There’s word that they’re in an emergency meeting over at the Central Hall. We can’t get through at all. Security is Red throughout the zone.” Red was the highest level in the five-tier system. ‘Lock Down’ was more accurate.

“All right. Listen, there’s been some trouble out here. A couple of my neighbors were…murdered. My place was pretty much ransacked as well.”

“My God! That’s terrible!” Lorraine replied. “You aren’t close to the New Republic areas, are you?”

“I just heard about them from the police officer that I’m making my report to. I don’t know anything about them.”

“Are you in a location where you can get an electronic dispatch?” E-dispatches were encrypted files normally sent to Federal locations only, with special log in information required to access the terminal, and upon approval, the actual message.

“I’m in a police station in Fairfield, Iowa. Not exactly up to Federal security levels,” Doug replied.

“Let me cross check locations in your area,” Lorraine replied. Doug could hear her entering his location in her computer. “You have a National Guard Center there. If you’re at the Fairfield Police Station, they’re about a thousand feet north, northwest. Head west to Twenty-Third, head north to West Stone, Turn right. They’ll be on your left. I can send your account the flash traffic immediately and you should be able to log in there.”

“Perfect, as always, Lorraine. I’ll have to finish up the police report here, and then I’ll head over there.”

“Remember that at my performance review in October, OK?” she laughed quietly.

“Done.” He ended the call, and then deciphered the number for the Columbus office on a piece of scratch paper from his small notebook. It might look suspicious to have his former employers’ corporate headquarters phone number in plain sight in his ‘official’ contacts list, he’d figured. He simply disguised it by scattering the numbers across a series of pages in apparently random locations.

“Good morning, this is Regent Columbus Operations Center. May I help you?” the pleasant voice answered.

“Yes, this is Doug Peterson, with the Food and Drug Administration. I’d like to speak with Kevin Martinez if possible?”

The pleasant voice paused before answering. “Do you know what division Mister Martinez is assigned to? I believe that he may be in the shipping department,” the pleasant voice asked as the challenge question.

“No, unfortunately, but I believed that he was in quality control. I was given this number to contact him,” Doug replied with the correct response.

One moment, Mister Peterson. I’ll try to connect you to that number.”

Doug heard several tones and a loud blast of static, and then Martinez answered.

“Mister Peterson. What can I do for you today?” the familiar, and intimidating voice answered.

“What were those noises on the line?” Doug said, irritated.

“Internal protocol to check your phone line for anyone listening in…local, on your end. Big Brother’s always listening. Where you calling from?”

“A police station near my what’s left of my home. Kevin, do you know August Kliest?” Doug asked. He was met with a few moments of silence.

“Of course,” Martinez replied.

“Do you know that he and his wife were murdered?” A longer silence.

“We have not been in contact with Mr. Kliest in three days. We had assumed that there was a power issue. This has happened several times in the past two months.”

“I came home from Des Moines. I topped the hill near my place, and Augie’s driveway was full of emergency vehicles. They were apparently shot in the back of the head, execution-style. From what the deputy said, it sounded as if they may have been died in a manner similar to people that I worked with in Des Moines. A bolt gun,” Doug said, referring to Rob Dowling’s death.

Martinez didn’t answer.

“Did Regent kill these people?” Doug pressed, trying to keep his voice quiet.

“No,” Martinez responded finally. “No Regent, or subsidiary company acted to terminate the Kliests. There is…”

“Terminate? Really Kevin?” Doug said, losing his temper. “They were slaughtered. Bound with zip-ties. If they weren’t murdered by Regent; if Rob Dowling and Francine Redmond weren’t, then who? Four people in my immediate circle are dead!”

“Regent did not kill the Kliests,” Martinez replied.

“Did Regent kill Rob and Francine?” Doug pushed.

Martinez paused. “Not on my orders.”

“So yes then? Jesus Christ! Who made the call? They didn’t know anything about RNEW!”

“Higher ups,” Martinez said quietly. “It is not prudent of me to look into it. Des Moines was certainly an internal action. I’ve only found out about this in the last two hours.”

“The internal security system at my house was removed, and then my home was blown up. Removed. Not stolen. Cameras, digital recorders, cables. Gone. All of it,” Doug snarled. “The backup generator was melted somehow. Kliests’ place might’ve had similar damage. I don’t know.”

“There is more in play here, Doug. It was not a Regent operation,” Martinez said.

“Is this hit tied to this New Republic bullshit?”

Martinez took a long time to reply. “Doug, there is more in play here. It’s not Regent. I do not know if the ambitions of the Republic play into it.”

“What do you know about them?”

“The New Republic? They want to overthrow the United States Government from within. Decentralized resistance, masterfully orchestrated. Cell-based units, shaping up to be classic revolutionary tactics. They’re pointing out all that is going wrong and all that the Federals are doing badly, and right now there is no voice that opposes them. Their words don’t match their real goals though. This Senator Blackburn,” Martinez paused a moment, “is ostensibly the leader. She doesn’t fit the mold though. Someone is pulling her strings.”

Doug didn’t know what to say.

“You still there, Peterson?” Martinez asked.

“Yeah,” he replied more calmly, now with brow furrowed. “I don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get? The traditional parties have both failed the country in the past few years, because they’re essentially the same and are utterly unwilling to do what they need to do. Most people call the current Republican President the best Democrat in fifty years. Can you blame someone for coming up with something different? Or for people to get behind them? Look at the results of the last three elections. Damned close. All of them. Meaning that there’s an ‘Us versus Them’ atmosphere. Ripe.”

“Yeah. I can spread blame around. You just described how people like Hitler came to power.”

“Yeah. Yeah it is,” Martinez said.

Doug reviewed his FDA itinerary with Martinez, who knew little of Doug’s pending trip, only that at the conclusion of the trip, he’d likely be recalled to Regent for his next corporate assignment. He was poised to ask another string of questions when he saw Officer Schwartz get up from his desk and hurriedly rush to the front of the station, carrying a pistol-gripped shotgun.

“Kevin, I gotta go. The cop across the hall just ran to the front of the station with a shotgun.”

“Make contact when you can,” Martinez replied as Doug hung up.

Doug quickly moved toward the door, peeking out the window to the front hallway before opening the thick door. He couldn’t see anyone, and opened the door slowly.

Moving into the hallway, he saw Schwartz and three other officers with weapons drawn on a scraggly blonde male, face down in the parking lot, struggling with more force than Doug would’ve expected from a man his size. Another officer zip-tied the man’s hands and ankles after hitting him with a taser. Within moments, two of the officers hauled the young man to his feet and dragged him through the front door.

“Back in that room!” one yelled at Doug, who complied but watched the proceedings.

The young mans’ face was not quite smiling, his eyes black….and soulless, he thought. The officers hauled him through the entry lobby and down another hallway; Doug assumed into a holding cell. Schwartz returned to his office a few seconds later.

“What the Hell was that?” Doug asked.

“That might be the murderer of your neighbors. He just shot four people at a food co-op. His car was full of electronics. Maybe you can I.D. some of it,” Schwartz said, breathing heavily. “I’m getting too damned old for this short of shit.”

“Who is he?” Doug posed.

“No I.D. Didn’t speak. Apparently he walked in, emptied his gun, and stood there. Some God-damned druggie from the city is my bet,” Schwartz spat. “This way. Deputy Ryan should have the vehicle out back right about now.”

Schwartz led Doug through a poorly lit hallway, through a massive door at the back of the station. He heard someone start screaming from another hallway to the right.

“Bastard probably just figured out he’s been caught,” Schwartz said.

Two officers were looking over an ancient, rusted-through S-10 Blazer. The back of the small SUV was stuffed with clothing, boxes, and electronics. Doug immediately recognized three cameras as being similar, if not identical to those from his home. Upon further inspection, he saw one of the video displays and a digital recorder from the security system.

“That’s from my house. Augie might’ve had the same stuff though,” Doug said to Schwartz, before noticing several other packages. He picked one up. It was from Regent.

“You sure about that?” Schwartz asked.

“Yeah. Absolutely,” Doug said, flipping over the Regent package, and then picking up another.

Both were RNEW-line products from the small markings on the packages. Doug knew that the combinations would produce the altering effects desired by Corporate. Doug scanned the rest of the contents of the SUV, now being unloaded, and saw dozens of RNEW-line packages…most empty.

There were far too many for an individual to have consumed over a couple of days’ time—and neither he, nor Augie would’ve had RNEW products on hand. Doug noticed among the debris in the passenger-side foot well, a map of the region. Despite the stains on it, he could make out yellow highlighting on a highway into Fairfield.

“Step away if you would, Mister Peterson. We need to process this all as evidence,” Deputy Schwartz asked.

“Uh, sure,” Doug said, walking around the front of the beat-up Chevy.

The license plate was from Ohio; the plate frame from a Chevy dealer in Columbus.

Distance, Chapter 46

2012-10-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

11:40 a.m.

Wednesday,

August Thirtieth

Near Fairfield, Iowa

The drive away from Des Moines was completely uneventful. Nothing in the way of traffic—nothing. Roadblocks obviously thrown up earlier in the year were unmanned, in some cases wind-blown soil had drifted around the concrete barriers. Doug had never seen the farm fields of Iowa completely bare of crops. The appearances of the scattered farmhouses east of Interstate Thirty-Five alternated between ‘abandoned’ and ‘fortified.’ Twice, west of Centerville, he spotted single riders on horseback, watching the highway. He didn’t slow down to see if they were armed. He realized later that there were probably many eyes watching that he never saw.

The route that Regent prepared for him was seemingly random, taking Doug farther south than he’d previously traveled, which allowed him to approach home from Keosauqua, well south of his ‘Regent’ home. He could’ve just as easily turned south and ended up at the Farm, but it would probably be in his best interest to stop at his ‘home’ before heading to the Farm.

He slowed well before he needed to, still well south of his home and that of Augie Kliest. A cluster of emergency vehicles at the Kliests was an unwelcome sight. He pulled in behind a City of Fairfield fire truck and paramedic unit, with an ambulance off to the side. A Jefferson County sheriff’s car was parked near the garage. A deputy approached Doug as he got out of the car.

“You have business here, sir?” the deputy asked, right hand on the butt of his holstered handgun.

“Uh, no. I’m a neighbor,” Doug replied, pointing to his house across the highway. “I’ve been out of town for most of the summer. I work for the Food and Drug administration. Mr. Kliest was watching the place for me. What’s happened?”

“Can you verify your whereabouts for the last several days?” the deputy asked.

“Well, I suppose so. I was in Des Moines until this morning; yesterday I arrived there from Denver,” he said, handing the deputy his Federal I.D. card and drivers’ license.

“Can you prove that?”

“I have my travel papers from the Denver office in my bag. Is that enough? What’s happened here?” Doug asked again.

“We’ve had a number of people in outlying areas killed by raiders. In some cases it’s appeared to be neighbor on neighbor. Mr. and Mrs. Kliest are deceased.”

“Good God. The Kliests wouldn’t harm a fly,” Doug said.

“No matter,” the deputy replied. “That your place?” he said pointing across the way to Doug’s place.

“Yeah. I’ve been gone since…June.”

“Pearson! Over here, now!” the deputy shouted over his shoulder to the house.

“Sir?” a very young man appeared in the doorway. Doug then noted a muddy boot print on the white door, and the destroyed door jamb. Something didn’t add up, though, because if Kliest had the same type of security that his home had, a mere kick on the front door would’ve just frustrated the would-be intruder. A kick wouldn’t trash the door jamb like that. A battering ram maybe…

“Escort this gentleman to his home over there,” the deputy pointed. “Do not enter the residence if you see anything out of the formerly ordinary. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied. Doug noted he was armed with a revolver that had seen better days.

“One of our volunteers,” the deputy said to Doug quietly. “If there’s anything that looks like it’s been tampered with, do not enter the home. Got it?” he said to Pearson.

“Sure. It’s not like there was much in the place,” Doug replied, not mentioning the extensive security system.

The young man jogged ahead of Doug’s government vehicle, down the Kliest’s driveway and up the hill to Doug’s place. He stopped dead in his tracks, forty feet from the house. Doug got out of the Cherokee as the young man waved him back.

“Be right back sir. Better not go in there,” he said.

Doug’s front door was rammed in; most of the windows in the home were shattered. Some sort of explosion had taken place inside, blasting glass and the wood mini-blinds apart and scattering them across the yard.

“Good God,” Doug said again, this time to himself. Looking to the ‘concealed’ fuel pump, he noticed the ‘shed’ had been ripped open and the pump was missing. A few moments later, the Deputy’s Chevrolet pulled in around Doug’s Jeep.

“Well, they got yours, too,” the deputy said. “Stay here while we clear the place. You got a basement?”

“Yeah,” Doug said, giving him the details on the layout.

“Hold fast here,” the deputy replied. “Pearson, holster that thing.”

Doug noted the young man had the weapon out and had both hands on it, ready to move into the house.

“Shotgun’s for close quarters work,” the deputy said, handing the young man a pistol-gripped shotgun. “Try not to shoot me.”

The deputy armed himself with his own shotgun, this one equipped with a small flashlight, and moved into the home through the front door, weapon ready. Pearson followed. Five long minutes later, both exited the home.

“Mister Peterson, come ahead please,” the deputy told Doug.

“What’d you find?”

“Looks like a couple of grenades. Your place is a wreck. Pretty well stripped, too,” the deputy replied. “Pearson will walk you through it,” he said, handing Doug a huge flashlight. “I need to get back across the street. Check in with me when you’re done with your walkthrough—let me know what they’ve taken.”

“Uh, okay,” Doug said, checking the flashlight.

Pearson kept quiet as Doug entered the wrecked house, smashed and blasted by explosives thrown through the front windows, blast marks radiating from several points on the floor. While the home was sparsely furnished, it appeared to Doug that several pieces had been taken out before the home was blown up. He was shocked to see some of the sheetrock blown into the voids between the wall framing—the walls now looked corrugated, and most of the ceilings had collapsed. Hunks of the wood flooring were blown out, with holes into the basement in the front room.

The security closet though, told Doug a different story, beyond simple theft and destruction: The closet was empty, cleared of all cables, connectors and hardware that held the Regent security system. Reviewing the rest of the house, the security cameras were also missing—carefully removed. The upstairs rooms had been hit by several small explosions—one per room—blowing out the glass and destroying several walls. Shattered parts of doors and wood trim covered the floor.

The basement had been stripped of all supplies—but Julie might have removed them. The furnace, hot water heater, and most of the plumbing was destroyed, again by some sort of small explosive. There was nothing undamaged in the home.

“I’d like to look out back. There was a generator out there,” Doug told Pearson, not looking for permission.

The door to the generator shack was hanging from a single hinge. Inside, the remains of the generator showed the level of effort put forth to destroy it. The entire room was blackened by fire and reeked of burned oil.

“Looks like it’s…melted,” Pearson said from over Doug’s shoulder.

“Yeah, it does,” Doug replied. He had no idea what could possibly melt a hole through the cylinder head and block of the big generator. A pool of hardened metal lay on the floor beneath it.

Doug sent the young Pearson back to Kliest’s with the deputy’s flashlight after retrieving one from the Jeep, and spent a few minutes collecting a few possessions as he mulled over the situation and tried to come to a different conclusion than the obvious one: Regent had killed Kliest, his wife, and sanitized the houses.

It was a full five minutes before he realized that the Segher Farm might have been sanitized as well. He headed back across the road before heading to the Farm, heart pounding at what he might find.

“You make a list of what’s been stolen?”

“Too much to list,” Doug told the deputy. “I’m heading to my wife’s place—she’s been staying with friends all summer,” Doug said as two men carried a basket with a body bag from the home.

“Who would that be exactly?” the deputy asked, noticing Doug’s stare. Doug gave him the name of the Seghers, as the second body was removed. The deputy wrote it down. “I’m going to need you to make a report on your home, Mister Peterson, whether you elect to go back there or not.”

“I’ll be happy to, tomorrow. As is, there’s nothing left worth anything to me.”

“Here’s the location of the Sheriff’s office,” the deputy said, handing Doug a business card. “You can file your report there. Sooner the better…as in, before close of business tomorrow. Got it?”

“Got it,” Doug said. “One thing though. How did they…die?”

“Looked like a single gunshot wound to the base of the skull. They were both bound with zip ties before they were killed.”

“My God. That’s horrible.”

“That someone entered their home, and that they didn’t see fit to defend themselves as whoever entered, tells us something. Either they didn’t see a threat coming or they knew who their killers were,” the deputy said as the doors to the ambulance were closed.

“When did it happen? Can you tell?”

“Yesterday morning, by the looks of it. Breakfast dishes were on the table,” the deputy replied. “Quite a few things look to have been taken, along with both of their vehicles. And firearms.”

“Do they have family?” Doug asked, feeling bad that he didn’t know.

“Son in the Navy. Two daughters. We haven’t located any of them yet.”

“I’ll stop in at the Sheriff’s office tomorrow.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it,” the deputy replied.

Almost absentmindedly, Doug drove south toward the Seghers, and almost missed the turn east that led by the farm. Augie Kliest did not strike him as the kind of man who would let a stranger inside; and if Regent was involved, the pieces fit that they were eliminating loose connections. ‘Am I next?’

The entry to the Farm had a new, very heavy-duty gate blocking the road, and the earthworks on either side would prevent anything from entering from the road. The gate sported a very heavy chain and lock. Doug grabbed his backpack and started to pull out his rifle when he heard a shotgun slide.

“Don’t even think about moving until I tell you to, Fed,” an unfamiliar voice ordered.

“No problem,” Doug replied.

“Hands where I can see them. Back away from the Jeep,” the man said. Doug complied immediately. “Hands on the hood, feet back and spread ‘em.”

Again, Doug complied.

“What’s your business here?” the man asked.

“To see my wife, Julie.”

“Really. What’s her given name?” the man asked, unfazed.

“Julia Kristen Forsythe. We were married on Easter Sunday.”

“Stay put,” the man said. A moment later, Doug heard a chime from the direction of the house, and the man spoke quietly, he assumed into some sort of radio.

“All right. Sounds like you might be who you say you are. Relax,” the man said. Doug turned around.

“I’m Kurt Segher. One of the many cousins,” he said, lowering the shotgun. “You’re Doug?”

“Yes. Good to meet you,” Doug said, shaking the man’s hand. He looked like a much younger version of Arie, and had just a hint of Arie’s accent. “Where are you from? I don’t remember hearing of you the last time I was here.”

“California. Not a good place for dairymen these days. Arie and the family were kind enough to help us get settled in here,” Kurt said as he unlocked the gate and pulled the chain free. “We’ll talk more later. I’m on patrol for the next couple of hours. Drive up to the equipment barn, and right inside. Doesn’t pay to have cars outside.”

“OK. Thanks,” Doug said as he got inside the Cherokee.

Julie was on the porch as he drove up, slowing for Arie who waved him into the equipment shed. The massive outer door was open, and Doug parked within a metal, fence-like cage inside. Julie met him as he opened the door and almost crushed him with a hug.

“You’re here! And early!” she said as she buried her face in his neck.

“I am, finally,” Doug said, finally kissing her as Arie closed the huge door. He noticed something different. “You’re…”

“Pregnant,” Julie replied softly. “Congratulations, Daddy,” she whispered in his ear as she kissed his neck. “I didn’t want to put that in a letter.”

Doug was stunned by the news, in a good way, and didn’t have any coherent reply. It took him more than a few moments to come up with words.

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard in a really long time,” he said quietly.

Julie loosened her grip on him and smiled. “Something’s wrong,” Julie said to him, taking a good look at him for the first time. “What’s happened?”

“Let’s go inside,” Doug answered, taking her hand.

After a robust handshake from Arie and a hug from Maria, Doug sat at the worn kitchen table, holding a giant mug of strong tea in one hand, Julie’s hand with the other.

“My neighbors, the Kliests, were murdered yesterday. I was up in Des Moines, drove down today. Thought I’d stop by the house to see how it was, talk with Augie. Cops, paramedics and firemen were there.”

“That’s terrible!” Julie responded immediately. Maria looked shaken as well.

“This man,” Arie said. “The one you spoke of? Worked for your company? Security man I believe you said, yes?”

“Yes,” Doug said.

“Someone he knew then,” Arie surmised. “You think company did this?”

“Distinct possibility. No. More than that…there’s more to it though,” Doug said before explaining the condition of his home and the relatively undamaged Kliest residence.

“Outsiders did this,” Maria said.

“I agree. Several of my colleagues in the Des Moines office have also been murdered recently. The Kliests may have been murdered in the same manner. Perhaps by the same people. I don’t know,” Doug said. “It’s not plausible that the Kliests were murdered randomly and that the security system equipment in our home was surgically removed prior to the house being trashed. Either Regent did it, or they didn’t. If they didn’t, then someone else knows what’s going on and acted. If Regent did it, then I’ve brought trouble here.”

“How do you find out?” Julie asked. “Can you…contact Corporate?”

“I can probably try from Fairfield tomorrow. No cell phones of course,” Doug said. “I’ll need to make a police report, so I’m already going to be in town. I’ll try to get through to Columbus.”

“How long are you here?” Arie asked.

“I’m to be on the road on September Eleventh. I’ve a number of locations in the Midwest that I’m to visit as part of an FDA inspection tour. I also believe that there are materials in the Jeep that are to be retrieved by Regent agents in those locations, or on the way,” Doug said. Arie quickly leaned back in his chair, hands on the table.

“Maria, call Roeland,” Arie said. “Douglas, with me please. We’ll be back soon,” he told Maria and Julie.

Doug and Arie walked back to the equipment shed, met by Roeland just inside. He’d obviously been on patrol on the Farm.

“What’s going on?” Roeland said, barely acknowledging Doug.

“His vehicle,” Arie began before Doug interrupted him.

“It has information aboard. Maybe marching orders from Columbus or Denver or both,” Doug said.

“If it can be retrieved without appearing to have been tampered with, do so. You have men for this,” Arie directed Roeland.

“Yes. I’ll contact them as soon as I can. Doug, when do you leave?”

“I’ve got time. I don’t leave until the Eleventh. I’m off the grid until then.”

“Good. Plenty of time for us to put you to work. You remember what ‘work’ is, don’t you?” Roeland said with a smirk.

“I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“What’s the story on the contents of the Jeep? Roeland asked.

“My personal bags, a few firearms. The boxes in the back are supposed to be Regent Preferred. Not altered.”

“Supposed to be?” Arie asked. “You believe otherwise?”

“I suspect otherwise,” Doug said.

“Have you checked for marker tags?” Roeland asked, referring to the radio frequency identification markers that could be hidden in any package, garment or vehicle.

“No point in checking. The technology has advanced dramatically. The chips could be buried within the packaging and I’d never see it. Some of the samples I know of were paper thin and a sixteenth of an inch wide,” Doug said. Arie looked through the cargo area windows suspiciously at the cardboard cases bearing the Regent logo.

“That’s OK. We’ve ways to find them if they’re here, and ways to find the repeater unit in the car if there is one,” Roeland said. “Not that any signals are going to get out of here,” he said off-handedly.

“Huh?” Doug asked. “Why not?”

“Look around,” Roeland said, pointing to the huge cage that held the Jeep. “The cage is designed to shield electromagnetic signals.” Doug noticed the steel cage had numerous copper wires fastened to it in a grid. “The cage seriously limits the effectiveness of radio transmission or reception. On the flip side, something like this cage could save our sensitive electronics if another nuke goes off and we’re smart enough to stow them inside.”

“Would you mind if I tried the radio?” Doug asked. He was skeptical that the cage would do what Roeland stated.

“Go for it,” Roeland replied.

Doug got in the Cherokee, turned the key on, and turned the radio on. Hitting the ‘scan’ button, the radio was unable to lock onto any station. Nothing but static. Switching to the FM band, he was met with similar results. The Cherokee also had a scanner for emergency services and weather bands. No signals were detected on any of the bands.

“This really does seem to work,” Doug said.

“It does a very good job for what it is. Your RFID tags and any on board repeater are almost certainly completely blocked,” Roeland said.

“If Regent were tracking me, I’d have gone off-grid,” Doug replied. “And they’d wonder how that happened.”

“Yes, but the transmitter systems don’t have a strong enough signal to go very far. You need a cell phone type repeater to provide a fix on your location, and two or three towers to triangulate your location. Since the cell towers…and the cell systems have been dead since the war, you probably went off-grid as soon as you left the neighborhood in Des Moines.”

“What about satellite?”

“GPS’s are dead. Sat phones are too. Without functioning satellites, GPS’s are just fancy bricks.”

That relieved Doug a little, knowing now that Regent didn’t know exactly where their products might be. Even so, they knew were he was heading, and he’d hardly be staying at his wrecked home when there were other options available. He still struggled with the Kliests deaths. He felt as if he were being herded, his options limited by others to suit their needs, not his.

“Roeland, you do what you can with this. Douglas, what should we do with this…stuff in the back of your Jeep?” Arie asked.

“I can’t recommend eating it. I don’t know where it’s from or what’s in it, unlike product made in my own plant back in the spring,” he said. “Feed it to the pigs or something.”

“Not sure they’d eat it,” Roeland replied.

Distance, Chapter 45

2012-09-27T22:21:00.001-07:00

Tuesday morning,

August Twenty-ninth

Regent Plaza,

Denver, Colorado

Three months away from home, Doug walked to the Regent corporate plane, waiting for takeoff. Attired in ‘business casual’ clothing, he was likely not to come back to Denver for at least a month. The FDA had directed him in a half-page memo to begin a Midwest tour of facilities that were failing to meet quotas—none were Regent operations. Doug suspected that information he had provided to Adam Krusen was having a favorable effect.

Julie would be surprised by his arrival, but he did tell her in a letter that he’d be back sometime in early September. The few days extra just happened to fit into an extended Labor Day holiday that the FDA staff was more than happy to create. Of five days in a typical work week, he could count on at least a quarter of the Federal staff missing one day and perhaps two, with a bare minimum of real work getting done in the meantime. Doug was stunned initially at the level of sloth in the administration—the few people that actually had the drive to work were quickly worn down or bought off with bonus pay…rewarding them for less actual productivity. As the summer wore on, it was apparent that less effort was being put into recovery. The effort was going toward reward and incentive pay, the scuttlebutt was all about how the President would be ‘strengthening the nation and taking care of those troublemakers in the East.’

Doug’s two immediate superiors were decent enough men and also completely out of their depth. Political appointees and friends of friends of Senators or some such, they were put in place after the qualified predecessors died in the first round of Guangdong flu. Doug had requested biographies of both the Director and Deputy Director in his first few days, just to gain some background on each. Neither had a background in food, industrial production or anything related to regulation. Both looked like they were doing their job, attending meetings, arranging for staff to handle assignments, and then reporting to their superiors.

Doug found the men easily manipulated, deferring to their staffs the heavy lifting, especially if the idea were presented for them to put forward as ‘theirs.’ Suspecting that neither knew the true nature of RNEW or Regent’s plans, he found it relatively easy to prevent incorporation of RNEW lines in non-affected plants in the West, and to limit shipments of the Regent-designed additives only to the already-affected Eastern United States. Regent, meanwhile, was struggling to find out why they were being shut down at every turn when trying to get ‘product’ to the Pacific Coast and to the troops in Mexico. He was quite thorough in making sure that the RNEW conversations didn’t identify him in any way, including electronic communication.

Doug wouldn’t miss what Denver now represented to him; the constant role-playing, masking any vestige of his true feelings and thoughts, working late in order to avoid being entrapped in the sex-fest at The Mile, where high priced prostitutes serviced any Federal worker they could wrap their legs around....his too-close-for-comfort proximity to what he now knew as an entrenched system in full collapse.

Drinks at The Mile were free, the food excellent, and the entertainment started at a thousand dollars, and went up from there. Doug’s one and only visit to the venue was eight days into his job, when one of the Deputy Directors’ senior staff invited him along. Doug attended out of courtesy and not knowing anything about the place, and was able to make a discrete exit after the man that invited him was shown to a private room, while Doug remained in the bar area. The bar was nothing more than a parade ground where the Federal invitees could select their entertainment for the evening, or their level of perversion, or both.

Denver International was much more shabby and crowded than his arrival visit in June. He had been escorted into a military security checkpoint, grilled for fifteen minutes, patted down and sent through a three-dimensional scanner. All of his luggage was searched as well, scanned, and left for him to re-pack. His Federal security badge was logged into the system, and he was cleared for travel to the Midwest.

None of that was unexpected, as he’d heard stories about outbound travel. Federal clearance didn’t guarantee travel approval, but no Federal I.D. was as good as trying to get there on foot. No one boarded any sort of airliner without proper I.D. within a hundred miles of a Federal Zone.

The troops lined up for departure looked more worn and drawn, than the men that Doug had seen in the terminal in June. Uniforms were mismatched; backpacks dirtier and worn, and the men themselves had an attitude that spoke of fatigue. His military escorts didn’t answer his casual question of where the men were coming from, or where they were going, just returning Doug’s question with a look that said, ‘don’t ask again.’ As he walked toward the Regent-supplied aircraft—another ‘effort to assist the Government in Recovery’—Doug noted that the aircraft being used by the Army were all in civilian livery. No military transports were visible anywhere. He also noted that the airport security detail, instead of driving the typical Humvee were using Toyota pickup trucks with mounted machine guns.

“Bloody Mary sir? Should be about five minutes or so to taxi,” the steward asked. “Also, sir, that envelope in the seat next to you is for you, regarding your connection in Des Moines I believe.”

“Uh, sure. That’d be great. And thanks for this,” he replied, holding up the large packet.

“You worked for Regent, sir?” the steward asked.

“Yes. Volunteered to help out the FDA until things get settled,” Doug replied. “Kind of a temporary detachment. Name’s Doug Peterson.”

“Michael Sandram, sir. Home base is Columbus.”

“How’re things back there? Been awhile since I’ve been.”

“Fine, sir,” the steward replied courteously, not giving away a thing as he poured Doug a tall drink and added a fresh celery stalk. Doug knew that fresh food like that wasn’t just a premium expense; it was all but impossible to find. “Should be right around an hour fifteen to Des Moines, once we’re airborne, and I’ve got a nice lunch once we’re at altitude.”

“Many thanks,” Doug replied, taking the drink.

The Pilatus single engine started up, idled for a minute or so, and the plane rolled onto the taxiway, pausing only a moment before the pilot went into his takeoff roll.

He hadn’t even noticed that the plane had leveled off at altitude, being deeply engrossed in the itinerary and his expected observations and the reasoning for the inspections.

The large securely sealed Tyvek envelope held Doug’s FDA assignment schedule, starting on Monday, September Eleventh. Until then, he was a free man, more or less. The paperwork included instructions on obtaining a Government Services Administration vehicle in Des Moines, locations of fueling stations, lodging, and of course the lengthy list of target facilities. He was directed to use his discretion on visiting targets on that list, none of which had been notified of his pending visit. He noted that every single fueling station, place of lodging, and cafeteria were either within Federal Zones or on military bases. Another envelope bore a Regent watermark, and Doug kept that free from the eyes of the steward. It was the first time in a month that he’d had a Regent packet arrive confidentially.

“Mister Peterson? I have a light lunch of baked brie and baguettes, with apricot preserves and a raspberry chipotle, accompanied by a nice Merlot, if you’re interested,” the steward inquired.

“Huh?” Doug replied. “Oh, sorry. Yes, that sounds great.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll have it right up.”

The lunch was quite good, in keeping with the entire system of Federal operations, but Doug didn’t know if this was more ‘Regent’ than ‘Federal.’ The lines seemed to blur, especially as he read through the single page Regent document marked ‘Confidential’.

8-29

Doug—it is imperative that you complete the entire itinerary provided herein by September 30, although there is no specific order for completion. All courtesies typically provided under Federal employment will be provided to you at each location of course. Additional information will be forthcoming at the Des Moines plant.

Your quarterly compensation has been doubled. The Chairman is most pleased with your performance.

Doug had correctly assumed that Regent had monitored not only his FDA communications, but also that of anyone else in the Denver location...so he often used hand-written notes on legal pads or better yet, sticky notes. He couldn’t figure out who authored this document, however, and what they were up to with this itinerary. Regent could be controlling the target plants’ operations without outright ownership, and could’ve set up a situation where his presence would be warranted on some sort of fact-finding mission, but he couldn’t figure out what could be so important. He was still wondering when the plane touched down in Des Moines.

“Mr. Peterson? Very nice to have you here, sir. I have your vehicle right over here,” a very pleasant young woman in the Security Service office said. The privatized Security Service handled transportation coordination for high-profile Federal staff as well as, Doug had discovered, serving as companion security to that of the long-established Federal Protective Service.

“Thanks. Been a long day,” he said offhandedly.

“It’ll be a long night too—tornado warnings up southwest of here,” the young woman said. “Here are your keys, you should be cleared at the gate. Do you need a map?”

“No thanks, I know where I’m headed,” he replied.

“Your vehicle is in the second row, third from the end,” she said. Doug noticed the very dusty first row of vehicles, obviously they’d not moved for quite some time.

“What’s up with those?” he asked.

“Oh. Those were hybrids. Haven’t worked since the war. Something to do with one of the onboard computers. The batteries won’t charge.”

“Huh. Can’t fix them?”

“With what?” the young woman laughed.

Doug drove off in a clean but weathered Grand Cherokee, and within fifteen minutes, arrived at the Regent plant.

He fished out his Regent Performance Group I.D. at the gate, surprised by the conciliatory but superior attitude of the guards, a cursory check of the government vehicle, and escort to the corporate conference room. He knew none of the employees along the way, and few of them spoke. There seemed to be an air of unease in the place.

His new position in the FDA didn’t allow him unrestricted plant access, even though he was “former” Regent. The plant manager barely acknowledged him, and none of the plant workers were people he’d known—which made him wonder where his trusted staff had been sent.

The office he formerly occupied now had a new nameplate on the door; the conference room appeared to be unmolested. An executive assistant showed Doug to his seat, brought him a chilled Pellegrino, and left. A moment later, the flat screen across from him came to life, and Regent Columbus logged on. Kevin Martinez was on the other end of the videoconference.

“Mister Peterson. Good to see you.”

“Kevin, you as well,” Doug lied. “Long time since training days.”

“And I seriously doubt that you’ve had any range time lately,” the man in the wheelchair replied from across the miles. “Wondering why you’re here, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Doug replied, taking a drink from the bottled water. “I don’t recognize anyone here. Where’d they all go?”

“From what I understand, several were transferred to other Des Moines facilities. At least two of your associates have passed on,” Martinez replied.

“What? Which…” Doug started, before Martinez continued on.

“Dowling, Robert Arthur. Professional hit outside the wire at your plant. Unusual weapon…captive bolt gun at the base of the skull.” Having toured slaughterhouses during his career, Doug was all to familiar with the old fashioned tool they used to use to destroy the cerebrum of cattle, leaving the brain stem intact for bleeding during slaughter. Hitting the base of the skull in a human however, was instant death.

Doug felt sick to his stomach. Rob was a good man. “Jesus,” he said to himself, feeling himself go pale. “Who else?” he said almost in a whisper.

“Redmond. Francine Renee,” Martinez said quietly.

“What happened to her?” Doug asked flatly. Martinez didn’t answer.

“We need to debrief. That’s why we’re here. You won’t be going back to Denver any time soon. What you know, we need to know,” Martinez said, leaning forward. “A few of my people in Des Moines are looking after your vehicle at this time. You’ll find that your compensation for the past several months will be residing in your vehicle, along with an a weapons package similar to the one we provided previously—take these along with you on your fact-finding trip. Additionally, there are several packages that will be retrieved by other Regent personnel while you are on your tour. You don’t need to take any action on those items.”

“Well, I’m pleased to be paid,” Doug said sarcastically, trying to regain his destroyed composure. “What am I being paid with?”

“Kruggerands, I would suspect. Smaller denominations would be silver rounds.”

“I don’t quite know what to say, other than thanks,” Doug said quietly.

“You’re doing pretty well financially working for the Federal Government, but it’d be pretty tough to actually find a place to spend it. Regent’s a bit more practical with regards to portability, although again, you’ll probably find it difficult to spend at this time. Questions?”

“No, not really, but I would like to be home tonight,” Doug said, leaning back in the chair. He realized how tired he was.

“Debrief will probably delay you to a late departure—I’d advise traveling in daylight.”

“Fair enough,” Doug replied, almost hiding his irritation. “So, what do you know? I had assumed that Regent monitored all electronic communications and voice traffic in the Denver operation.”

Martinez smiled. “We do…and much more. It’s more the nuance, the impression, the feeling for those above you. How they’ll react, what their weak spots are.”

“Regent has behavioral scientists for that. Predictive psychologists. Any corporation worth their salt does,” Doug replied.

“We do, and ours are good. There are…anomalies in any intelligence gathering operation that need to be run to ground. That’s why we’re here.”

“What sort of anomalies?” Doug asked, brow furrowed.

“Decisions made by your superiors that go against the recommendations of their staff, for one.”

Doug chuckled. “You ever work for someone that came to the completely wrong conclusion after being handed all the right data?”

“Sure.”

“The Director and Deputy Director don’t really have any idea of what the FDA does…what its’ responsibilities are. It’s not a stretch to think that they are being influenced by other Cabinet-level political appointees in a direction other than what might be predicted; or what might be logical based on data provided to them. They barely grasp the fact that our food production as a nation is a tiny fraction of what it was a year ago, because it doesn’t impact them directly in any way. You have any idea what kind of food we eat out there?” Doug asked, before realizing the answer. “Of course you do. Sorry. The FDA, and the vast majority of the departments out there, every single department head for certain, is completely out of touch with reality. You realize this, don’t you?” Doug asked.

“There are things that Regent can influence, and things that we cannot, at this time. You’re saying that you think that they’re being influenced by someone else, outside of their staff, and making the decisions they’re making?”

“That’s what I think. There’s only so much I can do within the framework I work in. I can’t exactly require the use of Regent product in certain parts of the country over the objections of my superiors, especially when they think that the East, being more populated than the West, needs it more.”

Doug and Martinez’ conference lasted the better part of three hours. Doug provided a handful of undocumented observations on his superiors as well as several other department heads and two Cabinet members. Regent would likely find a way to use the information as leverage. Doug learned inadvertently through the conversation that Regent was invested heavily in the revolts in the Northeast, when Martinez mentioned casually of Regent’s efforts to “distract and destabilize current leadership models.” Doug didn’t react to that statement outwardly, but was shocked to learn that Regent would do such a thing. A moment later, he realized that he shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

At the conclusion of the conference call, one of the Regent executive assistants directed Doug to a guest suite, not far from his old apartment, and provided him the concierge menu for room service, implying that he was to stay in his quarters. The armed security guards at the entry to the production area would prevent any informal tour of the working floor.

Plainly this was no longer ‘friendly territory.’

Wednesday morning,

August Thirtieth

Des Moines, Iowa

Six a.m. came and Doug rose quickly, eager to get on the road to Julie. After a hot shower, he packed, stowed his computer, and one of the Regent staff delivered his breakfast to his room. He noted the exceptionally subservient attitude immediately, finally realizing that aside from the guards, the entire staff was probably co-opted by RNEW. He wondered just what kind of quality and production levels they were maintaining, with minds as sharp as butter knives.

By seven, Doug was ready to leave, but hoped to get a glimpse of the production workers on First Shift. He was surprised to learn that the plant manager had not yet arrived, and that the guards were not disposed to let Doug enter, despite Federal credentials. Rather than making an issue of it, he decided to simply enter it in his FDA report, which Regent would no doubt read before any of his superiors, and see what corrective action would be taken to put up the appearance of open and honest environments for inspection by Federal Regulators.

The Cherokee was freshly washed and vacuumed, and the cargo area held the standard FDA road kit and the rest of the area was filled with boxes with Regent logos. The lot attendant provided Doug recommended driving routes to his Regent-provided home, and a sealed, unmarked envelope. In the passenger foot well, a fairly large backpack was stowed, and an M-4 rifle in a slipcase. He didn’t bother to open the envelope until he had cleared the facility gates and found a quiet, abandoned Ameri-Mart parking lot.

“Doug—product in the boxes is Preferred. Noted that you’d not cashed any of your Regent pay. Payroll is in the satchel in your car. With the anticipated reval of the dollar, Regent pays E Branch in gold and silver at the rate of $20/oz gold, $1.40/oz of silver. You ought to be able to buy anything you want paying with metal. Prices vary widely across the region—you’ll need to negotiate. Prices in paper are ridiculous—you’d need a truck to carry this much cash.

There’s four months’ payroll here, one hundred and twelve ounces of gold and the remaining fractions in silver.

Stay sharp. Sorry about your friends.—K. Martinez.”

For the first time, Doug realized that Martinez might have been responsible for Rob and Francine’s death. ‘Professional hit,’ he’d said about Rob's death, and no details at all on Francine.

What did they know that got them killed?

Distance, Chapter 44

2012-09-10T19:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday,

June Sixth

Regent Plaza,

Denver, Colorado

Doug stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out through the haze to the Front Range. From the forty-eighth floor, the layers of smoke stretch out below him as far as he could see. Uncomfortable in the tailored shirt, suit and five hundred dollar shoes, he waited for the Central Region liaison from the Food and Drug Administration. The five hundred square foot office held one desk, an ‘informal’ seating area, a conference table, and coffee bar. Doug thought the place a complete waste of real estate.

Within hours of the attack on the United States, the President implemented a plan for dispersing key governmental functions to various locations around the nation. Regent had conveniently made available six floors of the newly remodeled West Region Headquarters, fully networked and furnished, and just ‘days away from occupancy’. Regent made a point of the concession, stating humbly that corporate staff would be fine in their ‘temporary quarters’ in the lower floors.

Doug knew that it was all a lie—there was nothing ‘temporary’ about the opulent floors below the thirtieth floor, and there were no obvious signs of any pending move (moving boxes, inventory tags, etc.) or subtle signs (overflowing garbage and recycling bins of obsolete files and discards).

He had been asked…or ordered, as the case may be, to ‘volunteer to serve as a coordinator of former private sector food and nutrition professionals, serving as regulatory officers for the Federal Government, reporting to both the Director and Deputy Directors of the department.’ The idea and need for the position had been planted in the minds of the Food and Drug Administration Director and Deputy Director through several Regent covert operatives within the upper levels of the agency.

Three of the Regent senior officers, all below the level of the President but just barely, had met with Doug in a surprise visit to the Des Moines plant on the Tuesday following Memorial Day. Their tone was pleasant, belying the actual words they used. Doug thought the least of one overstuffed chair by the name of A.A. Slocum, who did little of the talking and seemed the stereotype of the blathering, overbearing and small-minded executive. The other two, Dale Salvatore and Tim Holdren, held Vice President titles and feigned admiration for the fat man, but Doug recognized it as bald-faced intimidation. Slocum was plain-spoken, seemed to know much more about Doug than he should have, including personal details that he seemed to enjoy working into a business conversation.

Doug loathed the man within thirty seconds of the onset of the meeting, and it took every ounce of his sales persona to illustrate otherwise. Slocum used information as one would use jagged glass under the fingernails of someone taped to a chair, casually bringing up his relationship with Cammie (‘how in the Hell does he know about her?!’), his former wife and her children, and Julie. He did not mention the Seghers or Julie’s whereabouts, but he might not have known that she’d handed in her resignation earlier that same day.

Corporate had countered Julie’s resignation letter with an opportunity to work from home on personnel and human resources issues, vetting of employees for advancement and things of that nature. She’d ‘regrettably declined’, due to ‘personal needs and the need to care for dear friends in the area,’ but would be ‘happy to be of service in the future when her current obligations were satisfied.’ At that point, Julie dropped off the grid.

The Regent executives left Doug with a scripted outline of his conversation with the FDA Director, and ‘suggested’ that a meeting by June Sixth would be ‘appropriate’.

The executives from Columbus left in a single-engine business plane, the very same one that later delivered Doug to Denver. The type of plane was foreign to him, a Pilatus PC-12, with a crew of two and a stewardess for the lone passenger—Doug.

Arriving through the haze at Denver International, an airport that Doug was intimately familiar with, he immediately noticed the dozens of Air Force and Army aircraft where commercial planes once parked. Concourses B and C were completely dedicated to military operations, and A Concourse only had a handful of commercial aircraft at the gates, and they seemed to have been there for quite some time—orange shields were installed in the engine nacelles, and other areas of the aircraft were covered with white shrink-wrap or some sort of sprayed-on cover. The Regent aircraft stopped on the east side of the A Concourse, where the plane was met by six armed soldiers. Everyone aboard was searched, the aircraft registration verified, and then they were escorted into the main terminal. The crew was escorted into a ‘Crew Rest Area’, and Doug headed on alone. The air was thick with the smell of the largest forest fires in Colorado history, now in their third week.

Doug nearly didn’t recognize the airport. First off, the air conditioning wasn’t working and the open areas under the large tent-like roof were filled with rows of soldiers in full gear--weapons and all. None appeared to be wounded, dirty or fresh from a battlefield, so Doug assumed that they were waiting to ship out to the Mexican Territory. The restaurants that once graced the common areas of the terminals were not only empty, but stripped to the walls. As Doug passed through the terminal, escorted by two soldiers now, he saw pallets of bottled water and MRE’s, shrink wrapped and sitting on pallet jacks. He moved through the terminal too quickly to see if they were Regent products…he hoped not.

The soldiers escorted Doug wordlessly up the escalator (not working) to the departure/pick up level. The upper level of the terminal, once packed with thousands of travelers, held none save Doug.

The East side of the terminal had a single car waiting at the curb, a black Ford Taurus sedan in limousine trim. The driver saw Doug through the windshield and quickly jumped out to help his passenger with his bag.

“Sorry, sir! Didn’t see your plane come in,” the young driver said. Doug noticed that the man was walking with a significant limp.

“No problem. Came straight in and right up to the terminal,” Doug said. “War wound?”

The young man took a moment to answer. “Well, not really. Cross-fire in Chicago. I served in three sand pits for the nation and made it home in one piece. Few years back, election night, Michigan Avenue, some rat-bastard shot me in the knee because I’m black. Army wouldn’t take me back even after we got nuked.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Doug said, knowing that this wasn’t the only one wounded in the aftermath of the last Presidential election.

“We’ll be at Regent Plaza in about twenty minutes, sir.”

“Not much traffic, huh?”

“Uh, no sir. None. With this pass on the mirror here, we can drive up to ninety, no questions….and there’s a transponder in the car in case someone gets nervous.”

“Nervous?”

“Car-bombs, sir. Anyone approaching any of the Federal facilities without a pass or a transponder, especially at a high rate of speed…well, lets just say it won’t end well for them. Applies to State facilities, too.”

“Hadn’t heard about that,” Doug said.

“Not really something they broadcast,” the driver said as they pulled onto the deserted highway. In moments they were exceeding the posted speed limit. “You haven’t been to a Federal Zone?”

“Uh, no. I work in Des Moines,” Doug said, intentionally playing along. Doug caught the drivers’ eye in the rear view mirror.

“Fed Zone. Heavy security, uniformed and plainclothes. If you think you can spot the undercover, chances are you’re wrong. Everything is subject to search and seizure at any time. TSA in blue shirts or jumpsuits. Federal Police in black. Military in camo. Snipers everywhere. Cameras everywhere. Mikes, too. All access points are heavily controlled. Anti-ram and anti-climb barriers all the way around it. Anyone going over that fence gets shot, no questions asked.”

“I may be working there. Any pointers?”

“If you’re working there, you’re living there. Fed employees billet in the Zone. Hotels, offices converted to dorms, whatever. Your quarters depend on how high you are on the pecking order and how much ass you kiss.”

“Like I said, I’m from Iowa. Kind of a different world I guess,” Doug said, keeping in character. “What about, you know, shopping and that kind of stuff? If I’m in the Zone, where do people shop?”

“Shop? No one shops. Feds get supplied. I’ve seen the trucks. I’ve heard the stuff is…top shelf. Best of the best,” the driver said, obviously angered. “The rest of us get third-rate.”

“That doesn’t seem…right,” he said. “There’s not enough to go around, but that doesn’t mean that…well, that sort of system is bullshit.”

“Good luck trying to make a dent in that system, bud.”

“Do you mind if I ask, uh, what it’s like outside the Zone?”

“Lots of gimmedats,” the driver replied in urban slang, almost too quickly for Doug to hear.

“Huh?” Doug replied honestly.

“That’s what we call them. ‘Give me that.’ Gimmedats. They take what they don’t get handed. Most of the people still living within a few miles of the Zone are ‘gimmedats’, living off the Feds. Outside of that, it’s just…thin. Not enough food. Water rationing. Rotating power outages. And these damned forest fires are brutal.”

Good to his word, the Taurus pulled into the secured parking garage at One Regent Plaza on time, even with the screening at the Federal Zone checkpoint. Doug was disheartened to see the abandoned nature of the Sixteenth Street Mall just outside. The once-vibrant pedestrian mall was empty, dirty, and littered with debris. The Rock Steady, Doug’s favorite classic rock restaurant, was a burned out shell.

“Jesus,” Doug said aloud.

“Yeah,” his driver replied. “Not quite like the old days.”

He tried to tip Eugene, his driver, but the young man told him that it was not allowed…although on a trip back to the airport, ‘a bottle of Southern Comfort would be appreciated.’ Doug’s bags were taken by the corporate concierge, and Doug was escorted through security, and whisked upstairs.

Eleven A.M.

June Sixth

“Mister Peterson, good to meet you. You come highly recommended,” FDA Undersecretary Mark Sather said, shaking Doug’s hand.

“Thank you very much, Undersecretary. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to serve,” Doug began.

For ninety minutes, Doug ran the corporate script, including the sanitized recap of his recent work at Regent and the introduction of the RNEW food enhancer line into the commercial and institutional products. Sather asked about the original intent for the product, and Doug lied right out loud, stating that it had been originally targeted for limited use in ultra high-end product lines, first to be offered to five-star restaurants, the thinking being that the enhancement would generate a huge spike in the restaurant brand during ‘high season’ in the restaurant industry. ‘With RNEW making ‘average’ food taste ‘better’, when added to ‘exceptional’ food, the results were of course even more dramatic,’ Doug told the FDA official, who was nearly salivating at the thought.

The expense of the product drove the limited production…it was only through great corporate sacrifice and capital investment that more efficient means of production were created, allowing Regent to help the nation recover.

Doug could scarcely believe the words from his own mouth. Sather though, bought it hook, line and sinker. After brief introductions to both the Director and Deputy Director of the Food and Drug Administration, he was shown his office.

He was in.

Doug’s duties as ‘liaison’ included instructions to bring order to the disorder of private-sector food production, including the nationalization of ‘underutilized assets’ and ‘strategic elements’ needed for recovery. Once word got out that the Federal Government would just as soon seize a corporation that in their view wasn’t working hard enough, production output soared.

Many of the seizures were effected through the financial industry, ‘calling the notes’ on current or overdue loans, or influencing the various states to enforce payment of overdue taxes. Once the seizures began, even before protests could begin, banks immediately fired all employees below the management level, and then often re-wrote job descriptions and pay scales to suit the interests of the bank. The rights of the corporation or the rightful owners of the business had no play in the agreement between the banks, who’d gladly pay any overdue taxes to the state, with penalty of course, and the thieves dressed in suits. Federal regulators or courts weren’t inclined to investigate, which was politispeak for ‘bought off.’

With little or no alternatives but to put neighbor against neighbor in the job market, most employees took the added burdens pushed upon them for far less in the way of real compensation. Those that didn’t found no other options available.

Many of the plants and factories seized were either run directly by Regent or ordered to operate under Regent direction. RNEW spread covertly, well before planned introductions throughout the Northeast and penetrating deep into the South.

Without adequate raw components however, or more correctly, raw components of a quality traditionally used in the United States, by mid July it was clear that even with dramatic reorganization of the industry, starvation was still a real threat.

The shortages provided the ideal gateway for RNEW to enter in, and Doug encouraged ‘test markets’ for widespread , overt product introduction, all within the Eastern half of the U.S. Urban areas were particularly short of reliable food pathways, so bulk deliveries of plain but nutritionally adequate began to be shipped East to make up for that which could not be produced locally.

Doug was six weeks into his new position before he noticed the push-back of Western U.S. food producers related to introduction of the RNEW component. He immediately suspected that information that he himself had provided had indeed made it out into the wild, and was the reason for not only the suspicion of ‘food modifiers’ but outright hostility toward any government program that would introduce them.

The lines solidified during July and August, clearly a movement of refusal was spreading East. Eastern users demanded more RNEW however, and the effects of the components took hold. Virtually all public servants, relief centers, schools and universities were using the spectrum of RNEW enhanced foods and beverages.

Life in Denver wasn’t Iowa, in any shape, manner, or form. There was no such thing as ‘business casual’, and Doug forced himself to fit in through attire, sometimes puffed-up mannerisms, and an overly expensive diet. Although he preferred to cook many of his own dinner meals, at least five times a week ‘the department’ bought senior staff dinner at one of the dozen or so ultra-high end restaurants that continued to thrive, feeding off the Federal credit card. He craved a basic lasagna or a stroganoff or a hamburger casserole. Federal leadership though, supped on prime rib, wild salmon, Maine lobster, pheasant and quail, and breakfasted on Eggs Hemingway.

Eugene was absolutely correct about the security in the Zone. An army of security officers patrolled building common areas, streets, alleys, restaurants. Going ‘outside the wire’ wasn’t just discouraged, anyone in the Zone was ordered to stay there for ‘their own protection.’

One of the most difficult things Doug faced was staying in ‘character’ at all times, not discussing anything to anyone not in his immediate circle and living the person Regent scripted him to be. Even within his own department, he was certain that at least two of the twenty or so people were Federal Security, and probably another was a covert Regent Intelligence employee. Little was said about any of the men, at least one of whom were always present in the office. The eyes of his staff told him as much as words would have, with regular office workers eyeing them, without being obvious about it. Body language also told Doug that no one trusted any of the three.

Doug’s apartment, a block away from the office like many other Federal employees, was more luxurious than any hotel he’d ever stayed in, arranged quietly by Regent but by all appearances, paid for by Doug directly. Corporate thought it best that Doug appeared to be a man of means, so that when someone from the FDA might be invited over for cocktails and dinner, that the environment was suitable for the impression of a private citizen dedicated to helping the Recovery, even at his own expense. Doug had little to do in the way of shopping or housework, as Regent provided both a service for keeping the kitchen stocked and housekeeping services. Regent also furnished Doug’s business wardrobe, and a secure link to the Regent computer network. He was certain of course, that his apartment was also monitored twenty-four-seven with audio and video.

Doug looked forward to Sunday evenings, which he always kept for himself. He could cook his own meals and try to spend some uninterrupted time writing to Julie when not preparing for the six a.m. start of the office day. Mail service was slow but did get through, sometimes taking more than a week for letters to arrive. The civilian phone system was a shambles, and other infrastructure failures were reported almost daily. Two scheduled return trips ‘home’ were canceled, one due to severe storms moving up from the south; the second due to a visit from the President that shut down all outbound traffic.

While Doug was heavily focused on ‘relief efforts’, he was secretly trying to limit the RNEW impact through whatever subterfuge he could get away with. It was clear that his proximity to the Federal Government’s operations in Denver allowed him a unique viewpoint and listening post. His immediate superiors, all the way up the food chain to the Director, were uniformly convinced that centralizing control was necessary to the recovery effort.

Congress continued to ‘interfere’ in the process, ‘slowing down’ progress toward ‘recovery.’

One late evening, after a lavish eight-course meal and numerous bottles of wine, Doug had to remain in character as conversations steered toward the need for more immediate action to ‘alleviate the logjam.’ The President, presented as patriotic and inspirational and a team player, was rumored to be a brooding, ruthless egomaniac. He wished that he and Julie had devised some sort of code system for their letters, so that he could convey inside information.

President Lambert focused three weeks of speeches in late July and early August to soothing the anger brewing in the Northeastern states, embers that were fanned by an outspoken New Jersey senator by the name of Blackburn. She’d been a thorn in the side of the Federal leadership for sometime now, and was gaining popular traction with continued collapses in public services an easy way to point out the utter failure of the Federal government. In July, she began to use the word secession, and found it receiving growing approval each time. Her Green Party backers, along with those who had been ‘disenfranchised, unemployed by the greedy corporations, lied to by your leaders, and robbed by those bastards in the banks’ demanded ‘social and financial justice’…giving her more and more traction each day. Lambert’s Executive Order on August first forgiving all corporate debt just added fuel to Blackburn’s fire.

The Greens, and soon thousands of others, demanded that a tax and debt Jubilee be declared, forgiving all debts and giving all a ‘fresh start.’ Local law enforcement, without the backup of the National Guard, could do little but watch as banks were systematically mobbed, looted and burned.

The President, in a heavy-handed manner, called up Regular Army units to suppress the uprising.

The worn threads holding the nation together began to tear to the sounds of M-16’s in Philadelphia. Twenty-six Green Party members were wounded, twelve killed, in the first fusillade. By the end of that first day, two hundred and six Americans were dead at the hands of their countrymen, and the seeds of the New Republic sprouted.

Distance, Chapter 43

2012-07-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning,

April Twentieth,

Des Moines, Iowa

Site-generated electricity had been restored to parts of the Regent plant after cannibalizing an adjacent factory of circuit breakers, master switches, and generator transfer switches. One generator refused to fire up, despite everything appearing to be in order.

With power, but without enough workers and raw materials, the plant remained idle. Worse yet, it was now a beacon for people within the area. Security forces had their hands full maintaining the plant perimeter. No one had any idea what was happening outside of their immediate neighborhoods most of the time; modern mass communication was non-existent. Ham radios and citizens bands were filled with rumor, little hard news, and endless conspiracies. Doug found it all irritating. Julie tried to decipher what she could, and made little progress. Before the temporary power came on, Doug told Julie that they could talk freely, in private; but when the power came back on, the chance of electronic surveillance monitoring their every word would be quite real.

During his first day and night back, Doug assigned what staff he had to inventory the plant and identify any system that appeared to have been damaged in the panic of the preceding days. Thankfully, there was disorder, there had been looting, but nothing appeared to be permanently damaged. In the first hours after the generator had fired up, Doug sat in his office, trying to deal with an insurmountable problem: How do you bring workers to the plant when the city…the community, the civilization is crumbling around them? When they see no point or worse, only see danger? When government was failing?

The answer came from government itself. After five days back at the plant, and on the second day of having power back, a representative from the Iowa Homeland Security office arrived at the front gate with an Iowa State Police escort, asking to see the plant manager. Doug fit the bill.

“Mister Peterson?” the short, thick man asked, entering Doug’s office. Doug thought he might have been a wrestler in his younger days.

“Yes. May I help you?”

“Steve Stroud. I’m with the Iowa Department of Emergency Services, here on behalf of Governor Heinrich.”

“What can we do for you, Mister Stroud? Please, have a seat. Coffee?”

Stroud took a seat. “Real coffee?”

“Yes, of course,” Doug said, fetching a large mug.

“It’s been months since I’ve had real coffee,” Stroud said.

“Costa Rican, that batch. We’ve got connections. We’re in the biz.”

“That’s why I’m here. We have a crisis on our hands.”

“A lot of that going around right now,” Doug said. “We have some serious issues here, too.”

“We are going to have people starving in Des Moines and the larger cities in a matter of days,” Stroud said with necessary gravity.

“Yes, we will,” Doug agreed. “And we can’t do anything about it with what we have on hand and what we’re in the middle of.” Doug had nearly resigned himself to the fact that the plant would never operate again.

“I’m here to try to help get you what you need. We need this plant back in operation to prevent this disaster,” Stroud said, leaning forward in his chair as if ready to spring.

“Are you talking with Freitag? Martin-West? Any of the other plants?” Doug asked.

“You have lights on and appear to be nearly ready to operate. Freitag is a burned-out shell. Martin-West was looted and the equipment appears to have been destroyed. Agnew Middleton’s offices are deserted, the production plant appears to have been secured, but there are no plant personnel anywhere. State Troopers are on location and are security at that location at the present.”

Doug was surprised by the news about the other plants, even more so about ‘A Middie’. The Agnew plant was nearly twice the size of the Des Moines Regent facility.

“OK, not good news. The production loss of those plants is serious,” Doug said. “Losses of equipment in particular. People can be trained—if I had them to train, that is.”

“What do you need to get this plant operational?” Stroud said, taking a deep drink of coffee.

Doug paused for a moment. “In a perfect world, I’d have the original employees recalled and back on site. I’d have a trucking system that could bring raw materials to the plant and remove finished goods. I need a dependable water system, which I don’t know if I have because our lab staff is missing. I’d not have people shooting at my security people, throwing fire-bombs three blocks away, and I’d have communications with my corporate network and supply chain,” Doug said, refilling Stroud’s cup of coffee.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any of that. I have less than thirty trained employees and seventy untrained people that actually might be worth something, most bedded down in our warehouse, which happens to have heat. I’ve assigned my wife to the personnel, scheduling and administration needs. She would be doing the job of a dozen people, if we were in operation. I don’t have a mechanical engineering division, no machinists, no truckers, and no trucks. No line workers, packers, quality control. I have two days of diesel left in the tanks, running minimal loads on the one surviving generator. The generator will also need to be serviced, which means the plant is down because the other generator is dead. I have no communications with any supplier, none with my corporate offices, none with my network. Frankly, I have no idea if Regent even exists as it did last Friday. Do you have any idea?”

Stroud didn’t hesitate in replying. “We’re establishing a new communications system. Rather unorthodox. We’re using shortwave radio frequencies to transmit data. I don’t really understand it, but I know that it’s working,” Stroud said. “It will be a while before anything like the Internet we used last week is back up in operation, our information systems staff tells me.”

“What about radio? TV? Normal stuff?” Doug said. “People aren’t going to do anything except cradle a shotgun until they either know that they’re safe in their homes or until they’re out of shells. At that point, they’ll just club the intruders to death. I know, because I’ve tried to get some of the employees out of their homes and back...at no small level of risk for either myself or a dozen security men.”

“AM stations—three of them—will be broadcasting tomorrow. They should have network feeds as well. Television will be back in a week,” Stroud said, taking another drink of coffee.

“What’s the Federal government doing to help?” Doug said. “FEMA should have been here by now.”

“Sure they should’ve been, and they did in fact come. We had six FEMA people arrive on a fifty million dollar Boeing Business Jet, all ready to help us ‘organize.’ We received no supplies. They have their hands full dealing with radiation, burns, evacuations. We’re in great shape by comparison.”

“Nothing else?” Doug asked. He was surprised. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been, he thought.

“No. They did ask for any medical professionals with burn experience to relocate to burn centers to deal with the victims, and they requisitioned supplies towards that end. The Governor of course didn’t resist. Right thing to do,” Stroud said. “We sent the FEMA folks back to where they came from.”

Doug thought for a minute, looking at the plant floor plan on his desk as he spoke. “In order for this plant to operate, I need people, power and raw materials. I can’t get people with the city in turmoil. They need to know that things are settling down. They need to know that the operation of this plant and others like it help keep them alive. We need fuel. We need trucks to move the finished product---even if we’re just moving it to locations in the city for distribution. If we get those things, we can help Des Moines first and other cities as we can. We can inspect the Agnew plant, try to find some of their staff, and get it in operation the same way. If we can’t get people, fuel, and raw materials, we’ll never open this plant again. We’ll run out of finished goods that’re keeping people here—security and staff people have to eat, too. We run out of fuel and it’s a matter of hours before this plant gets sacked,” Doug said. “We’re this close,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, “from losing it altogether.”

He and Julie had already discussed what might happen if the plant couldn’t be supplied, and the run back to the Segher Farm was anything but a sure thing. The CB radio was filled with people calling for help, reports of looters, as well as the looters themselves using the radio to communicate between various gangs. They’d already made plans to leave the plant before dawn, the day that the fuel tanks in the generators ran dry. Doug had already secured the RNEW line and several of the key components of the additive--‘secured’ in this case being ‘destroyed.’ Non-encrypted files had also been removed from the computer system, and any remaining hardcopies were in Doug’s desk.

“If you’re available, Mister Peterson, I’d like to arrange a meeting with some of our staff at the my office. You available?” Stroud asked.

“Yeah. When?”

“How about now?”

The meeting with the Iowa Department of Homeland Security led to a systematic calming effort in Des Moines triggered by the Governor’s address to the State explained the situation in a single sentence: Iowa needs your help, or we all fail.

Doug helped get four major plants back in operation, putting to work more than ten thousand plant workers; organizing new supply sources; and negotiating leases for shipping on both ends of production. Security issues near the plant and working into the downtown area and neighborhoods became much less of a problem, once there was food back in the stores and money, of a sort. Within a week of the attacks, the State Legislature had put into effect ‘Iowa Scrip’ in lieu of ‘dollars’, which were neither trusted nor accepted by many sellers. Along with the new currency, the State abolished all state and local taxes of varying rates, and implemented a five percent flat tax on finished retail goods. For corporations like Regent, this amounted to a windfall---Regent didn’t produce anything for direct retail sale, and as such received a huge break on taxation.

It took until the Fourteenth of May for Regent Corporate to establish regular communications with the Des Moines operation, by which time the plant was in full operation and running three shifts. Julie had continued on in personnel and she helped train the new staff—none of the previous employees returned. The new staff, coming from across the spectrum of Des Moines business, worked as a finely tuned team nearly from the start.

Regent brought one of the corporate aircraft into the Des Moines airport, and unloaded radio equipment that was exclusive to the use of the company. The equipment could broadcast voice and data in encrypted and compressed format, hundreds of individual frequencies at once. Far less capable than the Internet, as communications was limited to the Regent network, but much more secure and fast than other options.

Corporate had a long, probing conversation with Doug regarding the lack of RNEW enhancements in current production in Des Moines. One of the accountant-types on the other end of the radio transmission seemed unimpressed with Doug’s explanation that the raw materials just weren’t available. The bean counters were impressed though, that production had been increased by sixty-five percent over pre-War levels within a month of plant re-start. With Doug’s obvious organizational skills in dealing with the multiple Des Moines plants, Corporate immediately identified him as a candidate for reassignment in other areas ‘critical to corporate objectives.’

By June Sixth, he’d be reassigned, but still ‘based out of Des Moines.’ Corporate didn’t elaborate on his new duties, but did tell him that the work involved extensive travel and long-term temporary duties outside of his base office…that told them all he needed to know. Staying in Des Moines alone, Julie would serve as personnel director for the four Regent-run operations…or she could quit, move back to Doug’s company house, or the Farm. Doug and Julie made a trip down to the Farm for Memorial Day to discuss their options with the Seghers.

Memorial Day

May Twenty-Ninth

The Segher Farm

“Staying is not an option, Douglas,” Arie said. “Staying in the city…in any city is not a place for a woman alone. But you know this, ya?” Roeland stayed silent, leaning forward on the welding table that served as an impromptu conference table.

“Yes. I do not…we, do not that is, want to be a burden.”

“Julie is no burden at all. As for your own home, that I believe is even more tenuous, despite any assistance that your neighbor may provide you. He is the one on the inside? The one spying on you?” Roeland asked.

“August Kliest—yes, or so I thought. The more I talk with him the more I believe that he doesn’t trust the company, either. I just doubt that he knows the whole picture.”

“Is of no matter,” Arie said. “I see no reason not to tell him that Julie will be staying elsewhere when you are away on business. You have said they know of us already. Anyone who is paying attention knows not to be alone these days, or even in small groups.”

“I believe August would agree. I don’t see a problem on his end,” Doug said.

“But your travel concerns, you, ya?” Arie asked as Maria entered the equipment shed carrying travel mugs of tea. Julie was taking a well-deserved nap, having been up most of the previous evening with a stomach bug.

“Yes. I’m decidedly in the dark on what Corporate is expecting of me. No idea where I’m going, what I’ll be doing, how long I’ll be gone—but they told me to expect a minimum of a week. I won’t know anything until I get to Columbus on the Sixth.”

“You’ve said that you see two seats of corporate power—one in Denver, one in Columbus, right?” Roeland asked.

“Yeah.”

“Safe bet that you’re going to be in both of those, and go from there. Outside bet though, especially with the needs of the Feds in recovery, that you’ll be ‘helping’ them…don’t you think? I mean, isn’t it still logical for Regent to get their hooks in as deep as they can on the Federal level to push RNEW?”

Doug realized that Roeland was right, and that Doug was going to be the victim of his own strategy, one that he himself presented to Corporate more than a month before. He could be the lead agent of Regent influencing the Food and Drug Administration regulators either directly or indirectly—just a ‘temporary assignment to help organize,’ he remembered—his own words. He knew that at least twenty former FDA workers had jumped to Regent in the two years preceding the collapse, and that most of them had been ‘made available’ by Regent to ‘assist’ the FDA in ‘recovery.’ Despite the disclosure agreements, each of the ‘former’ Regent personnel stood to gain considerably during their time ‘away’ from the company.

“Last I heard the FDA was still based in Denver. They were planning to be back in D.C. by September.”

“Assuming that the military manages to get the radiation cleaned up,” Roeland replied. “Which is quite unlikely.”

Starting almost immediately, Arie rounded up as many hands and vehicles as he could to relocate the majority of Doug and Julie’s things from Doug’s house. Ninety percent of the food supplies and all of the medicines, vitamins and supplements made the move. Doug fueled up his company pickup from the diesel tank, and then filled or topped off all of the Segher farm trucks. Augie Kliest dropped in during mid-move.

“Doug, how are you? Been a while,” he said.

“Pretty busy, Augie. I’ve been reassigned up the food chain,” Doug replied.

“So I’ve heard. Doubling up?”

“What’s that?” Doug asked.

“Doubling up. Moving in with the in-laws. Lot of that going on these days—safer.”

“Pretty much, yes. Julie will be staying with the Segher’s. We’ll still keep most of our stuff here, but things she’ll need more often we’ll move out. Can you keep an eye on the place for us?”

“Sure. Not much else to do—Corporate has been promising that the network will be back up to full strength any day now, but that day never seems to come. So we garden, store up, and watch out.”

“Thanks. Yes, Corporate is a mess. I caught a ration of crap for going out on my own to get things up in Des Moines going again, apparently not in the Regent manner.”

“Columbus seems to be run by egomaniacs, fair warning,” Augie said.

“I’m probably going to Denver on assignment; back when I can get here.”

“Doesn’t matter. Same mindset: Empire builders. That is not a compliment.”

Doug didn’t know what struck him about August’s comments, but in that moment he decided that Kliest probably didn’t know about RNEW, and wouldn’t approve of it if he did.

“August, you have no idea,” Doug said, before turning to Roeland. “Roeland, Augie and I are going to have a talk, if you don’t mind. You OK here?”

“Ten minutes and we’ll be done. You can just meet us back at the Farm when you’re done. I think your bride is working on her letter of resignation.”

“Much appreciated. Thanks, Roel.”

“So this is what Corporate decided was ‘executive level transport?’” Augie said, patting the dull paint on the half-ton Dodge pickup.

“There’s a little more to it than meets the eye, Doug replied. “Diesel for one, which wasn’t stock they tell me. The big thing is the body armor.”

“No,” Augie said in surprise.

“Yes. My Explorer had it too—and I made use of it, but I guess diesel fuel is more stable over time.”

“It is at that. What’s on your mind?”

“You mentioned ‘empire building’ earlier. You’re right, you just don’t know how right you are.”

For an hour and a half Doug and August Kliest talked about every aspect of RNEW. Kliest of course new of the RNEW line, but not exactly what it was about, its effects, or an end-goal. He took a step backward when Doug told him of the mental effects on the consumers of the product, eyes narrowing first in anger, then in resolve.

“That explains a lot. Missing pieces in the puzzle are no longer missing,” Kliest said almost to himself. “So you’re sticking with it? After what you just told me?”

“You ever hear of Kevin Martinez?”

“Yeah. Sadist that runs the Personal Security Division.”

“You’ve met,” Doug replied.

“Once. He seemed to be on a mission to prove himself better than others with any weapon at hand,” Augie said. “I had to disappoint him. I don’t think he had much use for me after that.”

“He has implied several times over the past couple months that he is watching every move I make.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him, but physically it’s not possible. Your security feeds are dead at the house; most of the Corporate network is hopelessly hobbled by communications bottlenecks. You aren’t staying on the inside because of that piece of work.”

“No, I’m staying in because I’m trying to mitigate the damage,” Doug said honestly. “And, because I think they’ll kill me if I leave. I know too much.”

“That is almost certainly correct,” Augie replied. “I take it you’ve found a way to get information out about this?”

“Yes, but how do you know that?”

“A) I’m a former military intelligence officer. B), a dramatic change in sales trend occurred the third week of April for Regent. Absolutely hit a wall. Discounts aren’t working; relief supplies have been rejected in favor of other, inferior products—words from the Sales Division, not from me. They’re not selling anything in the South and Southwest, nor are they selling anything in the far West…and that trend is creeping eastward. You responsible for torpedoing their plans?”

“With any luck, yeah. I might be.”

“Then you’ve made the right choice and a difference. Probably not much hope for the East. They’re demanding more every day.”

“So I’ve seen.”

“You know about the sales trends then?”

“No. I have not been privy to that. Nice to hear that, though.”

“You realize of course that if I were fully engaged with the company plans that I’d put a bullet in your head right now, don’t you?” Kliest said, shocking Doug.

“Yes,” Doug replied. “But I have the feeling that you are not that kind of man.”

“Trust your feelings, young man. You may live longer that way.”

Distance, Chapter 42

2012-05-24T21:37:00.002-07:00

11:50 a.m.

Easter Sunday

Chapel of the Woods,

Elsen Farm

The small chapel had been filled with many of the local families for the third and final service of the day. The pastor, a lifelong friend of the Segher’s, had to be well past traditional ‘retirement age’, but Doug could tell that the man thrived in the environment. He’d met with he and Julie between the eight-thirty and ten-thirty services for a brief counseling session. The question of a formal marriage license was dispatched by the local judge, who wrote up a license legal enough to pass muster on the spot.

Doug borrowed a suit from Peter, who was nearly the same size, and Julie had a choice of dresses, but chose a simple, timeless blue number that could’ve dated from the Forties. Doug thought she looked gorgeous. They readied themselves in the small dressing rooms of the farm chapel, meeting their attendants just as a recorded version of Trumpet Voluntary began as the wedding processional. Both were surprised to see that not only was the church full, there were more people attending the wedding than had been in the last service. Roeland served as best man; Molly was Julie’s matron of honor.

A few moments later, Julie stood by Doug; walked down the aisle by her brother.

“We are gathered at this time on this most joyous of days, the day we remember Christ’s resurrection and victory over death, to celebrate the marriage of Douglas Michael Peterson and Julia Kristen Forsythe. Despite the tragedies unfolding around our nation and world, we rejoice in the prospect of this union of this man and this woman, a reminder to us all that we must look to the future,” the pastor began.

“I have not known either Doug or Julie for long; Julie a bit longer during her stay here with the Seghers, but Doug just since this morning. Without much in the way of preparation and due to circumstance, I have been provided the liberty to speak off the cuff on the topic of marriage,” he said, pulling out a piece of paper.

“This is your marriage license, which I have on good authority will be legal as soon as I sign it,” Pastor Dietrich said, which garnered a few quiet laughs from the congregants.

“But it’s a piece of paper. That’s all…not a marriage. The marriage is built over weeks and months and years. It is built through the triumphs and tragedies, the births, the deaths, the birthdays. Through skinned knees and runny noses. It is built on faith, and hope and the knowledge that through it all, your spouse will be with you.”

“Many weddings have readings from First Corinthians thirteen. Today though, we go to the Gospel of John, but starting with a verse that seldom is seen as ‘appropriate for a wedding’, but there are few that could be more appropriate. John fifteen, verse thirteen: ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’”

“Because the truth is this: Chances are very good that that you will never be asked to lay down your life for your spouse, but you will give yourself up for your spouse. Marriage is the gift of yourselves to each other; not a piece of paper, not a ring. Every day you give yourselves to each other. That is a marriage.”

Doug and Julie exchanged their own vows, and with the introduction by the Pastor, shared their first married kiss.

3:40 p.m.

What might have been a somber Easter dinner, given the national circumstance, turned into a more joyful wedding reception, attended by nearly all of the Segher extended families and a dozen neighbors.

As the last of the neighbors headed home, Julie and Molly began to pack up Julie’s things for the drive first to Doug’s home, then to Des Moines. The clear, bright morning had turned to a low overcast, with winds picking up from the northwest. Doug felt he was a bit in the way, and was rescued by Arie.

“Douglas, if you’re not on the leash of your bride, a moment?”

“Certainly,” he said with a smile. They headed out to the wrap-around front porch.

“I spoke with some of the men about your company. Rest assured the word will get out. Expect it to be out within the next week or so. It will not be seen as coming from here,” Arie said.

“Thank you. I never did meet Mister Krusen.”

“By design, of course,” Arie said with a sideways smile. “Things will be difficult now…and for a long time ahead.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

“Des Moines then?” the older man asked, leaning with both hands on the porch rail, looking west.

“Unless by some miracle there is some news at my home that there is a change in plan. My neighbor—he’s Regent as well. He may know something I don’t about what’s going on in the City,” Doug said.

“If it’s as bad as I expect it could be, you might not make it there. You realize that of course,” Arie said, turning to Doug with his piercing eyes.

“Yes, of course. We’ll travel carefully. Off of the highways, on back roads where we can.”

“Still could be...will be dangerous. No telling how people will behave—either in the towns or the cities…or on the roads.”

“I understand…but I think it’s smarter for us to at least leave the farm and get back up to my place. I have no idea how Regent might react to any of this...if they’re expecting me back after the attack, whatever. I cannot imagine though, that they are doing anything but trying to capitalize on the crisis, and that cannot be done with the plants closed and the systems down. That means that I’m valuable to the point of having them look for me.”

“You turn back, the first sign of trouble. You don’t look back. You understand, Douglas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Things like this have happened before, just not in America. I had four uncles who didn’t leave Europe in time to avoid the troubles. Two talked of leaving and wrote my father, but the tie to the land was stronger. They were never heard from again…none of them. My uncles, their wives, sixteen children…all gone to Hitler. This can happen here. It can happen in Iowa. You need to understand this, ya?”

Doug took Arie’s quiet, forceful words to heart. Perhaps for too long he had thought himself immune to, even above, the problems around him. The trip to Wisconsin, the Explorer being shot up outside of Des Moines, neither hit him as hard has Arie’s determination to make Doug understand plain facts.

Neither the Germans, nor their collaborators in their occupied countries, had a product like RNEW to make them check their conscience at the door. Without drug-addled brains, fully aware of what they were doing and willingly turning a blind eye, they slaughtered millions.

What could happen with those in control of a population motivated by RNEW, instead of those motivated by a mere Fuhrer?

5:30 p.m.

4121 Parker Road

Fairfield, Iowa

The rain was just starting as Doug pulled into his driveway, noting that neither his home nor Augie Kliest’s had any lights on. The house appeared unmolested.

“Welcome home,” Doug said as he squeezed Julie’s hand.

“A Company home,” she said skeptically.

“Well, yes. That is true,” he said as they got out of the car. “You ready?”

“For what?”

“Threshold, of course,” Doug replied with a smile, unlocking the front door, and then returning to the car. Without giving her the opportunity to protest, he swept his surprised bride off her feet and carried her inside to her mild protests.

Two hours later, they unpacked the car.

Monday afternoon

April Seventeenth,

Des Moines, Iowa

The drive to Des Moines had been chaos, only matched by the roadblocks in the industrial areas manned by armed guards, all privately employed, with all Army National Guard units deployed to Mexico. The military staffing remaining was barely able to man the empty Reserve Centers.

Doug had backtracked the route he’d taken just days before, but the experience was very different. Like other parts of the Midwest earlier in the year, roads were blocked off through the use of heavy equipment—farm roads in particular—making them inaccessible from the main roads. The closer he and Julie were to Des Moines, the more abandoned cars and refugees they passed. Only a few tried to stop them; the remainder looked resigned to their fate. Doug wondered to himself if they were RNEW consumers.

The plant was completely shut down, and only a handful of the day-shift staff--normally numbering in the hundreds--was present in the building. Regent Security forces were seemingly fully staffed. Doug had no problem entering the compound with his I.D., and Julie wasn’t questioned. It seemed that the security forces were looking for someone in charge, and Doug fit the bill.

“This doesn’t look good,” Julie said after they entered the production area. At least it was intact.

“No, not a bit. Emergency generators are either dead or out of fuel. Without power, we’re screwed,” he said, flipping a light switch. Even the battery powered emergency and exit lights were dead. “This way—my office is in the Administration area.”

Francine Redmond’s desk was empty, along with all the others.

“What next? Where do you start?” Julie asked.

“Good question. I don’t exactly know. Won’t be long before we hear, one way or the other, from Corporate. No idea how that’ll happen though.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. I just do,” he said, holding her hand. “Let’s get to my—to our apartment. You can get settled in.”

“Cooking will be interesting,” she said. “Or do you have things on hand?”

“I have stuff, don’t worry. Water, too,” he said as he unlocked the door to the apartment wing.

“How many apartments here?”

“Fifteen. Five occupied, or they were last Friday,” Doug said, noting the empty Information Systems department. “Will you be OK getting settled by yourself?”

“Of course, as long as you’re coming back,” Julie said, sneaking a kiss. “It’s not like we have a lot of stuff to bring in from the car. Two or three trips and I’ll be fine.”

“Try to keep me away, Missus Peterson,” he said with a smile. “I’m going to try see who’s here. I’ll be back by six, OK?”

“Sure. Dinner will be a surprise. How do you want me to cook with power off?”

“There’s a two-burner propane camp stove in the utility closet. There’s a pack of propane canisters on the top shelf.”

“Your company thinks of everything.”

“Nope, that was purchased at AmeriMart in Chicago.”

“I have a forward thinking husband. Good for me,” Julie said.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m just lucky,” Doug said as someone entered the apartment corridor. Julie took the key and opened the door. “See you later,” he whispered.

“Mister Peterson? I heard you were back,” Rob Dowling said from the darkened corridor.

“Yeah. And married, by the way,” he replied, walking toward Rob. “You staying here now?”

“Commandeered an apartment. I can’t get to my place without a good chance of getting skinned alive. Married? Seriously?”

“Yep, long time coming, finally did it yesterday.”

“Some honeymoon,” Rob replied. “She must be very understanding.”

“She has been so far.”

“You brought her here?” Rob asked, quite surprised.

“Safer than leaving her alone at our house down south. Strength in numbers.”

“Sure, if you’re not in the center of a target,” Rob replied.

“Des Moines isn’t going to get hit,” Doug replied dismissively.

“I wasn’t talking about Des Moines. I’m talking about the plant. Security fired on people last night. And again this morning.”

“Jesus….”

“Yeah. Not good. Warning shots, this time anyway,” Rob said as they entered Doug’s office. It looked just as he’d left it.

“What happened?”

“All hell broke loose. Too much for the local cops to handle. Stores are stripped bare. Power went down, about the same time that Huntsville got hit we figured. After that, it’s been a free-for-all. The Governor instituted martial law after dark. Looters get shot. Frankly, I’m surprised you made it in.”

“Never hit a checkpoint that we weren’t waved through,” Doug said, thinking for a moment. “Who do we have on site?”

“Maybe twenty line workers. Two or three supervisors. That’s it,” Dowling said. “It’s not like most of the staff live within walking distance, and with the lock-down, no one’s willing to put their lives on the line for a job.”

“Anybody from plant engineering?”

“No,” Rob replied. “But I haven’t exactly scoured the bowels of the place.”

“Let’s say you go round up a handful of the security folks outside and do just that. I want all personnel in the production training room at three o’clock. We need to assess the plant and see what we can do about getting the place running.”

“You know sir, that main power is off line for the whole city, right?”

“Was at our place, too. There are five diesel generators on this site. If they weren’t damaged, they should be able to power the plant for a week.”

“What then?”

“We’ll get to that later. If the generators are done, then so are we. If they’re not, people will want our product. People out there,” Doug pointed to the windows, “need our product.”

“Making us too important to loot,” Rob said. “Hopefully.”

“Yeah. That,” Doug said with a grin. “I’m going to try to find the emergency procedures manual.”

“Francine’s desk.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. She printed about a dozen of the updates last Friday,” Rob said.

“Did she know something that we didn’t?”

“I’m sure she knows a lot of things we don’t know,” Rob said, obviously referring to Francine’s reputation.

The plant Emergency Operations manual was prefaced on having critical staff on site to actually implement the plan. The creators of the Ops plan had done a thorough job of creating various scenarios for plant emergencies, from explosions in the adjacent rail yards to severe winter storms; national emergencies to tornadoes. A half dozen of the scenarios had large-scale, widespread and long-lasting power disruptions affecting the region.

None of the scenarios involved electromagnetic attacks, war on the North American continent; fallout, radiation or economic collapse. Almost all assumed that the management and production staffs would actually be present for a recovery process, rather than running away or staying home either in fear of what was outside, or fear they’d be attacked in their own city.

Rob Dowling had rounded up fifteen production workers and a half-dozen security men from the complement of forty-two. In Rob’s opinion, half of the security men (no women in the group at all) could not be trusted, and were likely on site to case the joint and get first-pickings. They were eyeing everything in the place that wasn’t nailed down, and half of bolted in fixtures.

“Good afternoon,” Doug started in the half-darkened room. “For those that haven’t met me yet, I’m Doug Peterson, plant manager and general corporate fixit man.”

“You’ve got a lot to fix here, mister!” one of the more overweight security men said, getting a few quiet laughs.

“Yeah, so it seems. First off, no news from corporate of course, so we’re on our own to figure out how to get the plant up and going again,” Doug said.

“Do you think that’s possible?” one of the younger line workers asked. “I mean, I need this job.”

“I’d like to say right off the bat, Hell yes. Honestly I don’t know. I need people with experience in electrical operations to help figure that out. Anyone got that in their background?”

One hand went up. “OK—there’s a start. What’s your background?”

“I worked as an electrician’s apprentice in residential construction back when there was residential construction…”

“OK, See me right after we wrap up here,” Doug said, then heading into other key production roles. Half of the people were just line workers, with no experience outside of building boxes or loading or feeding machines. Doug noticed as he was questioning the small group that two of the security men were acting suspiciously, looking at the workers as if they were making lists of their own.

Doug asked the other workers of their specialties, and assigned them to review their areas for anything that needed repair, replacement or general work before the line could restart. Those assignments were in fact busy work, but they needed something to do, and the work would need to be done sooner or later.

“Good. Who’s head of plant security?” Doug continued.

“Greg Rollins. Right here,” one of the security men said—Doug was pleased to see he was not one of the ones that had been eyeing the workers.

“Can you break any of your men loose for plant operations if needed?”

“We can talk about that—my contract with Corporate doesn’t really allow a lot of latitude in that area,” the man replied. Doug thought he had stated that for appearance’s sake.

“OK—good enough. According to the Emergency manual, there are supposed to be personal supplies for emergency operations in the Personnel and Security offices. Is that correct?”

“If they’re still there, I’ll be surprised, sir,” Rollins replied. “When things started going south over the weekend, the plant workers helped themselves.”

“Please check on that. Lighting in particular—flashlights, batteries, that kind of stuff.”

“Will do,” Rollins said, looking at one of the men to his left, again apparently a trustworthy-type. The man nodded without a word.

“All right, that’s all I’ve got for the moment. Plant staff, you’re welcome to stay here of course for the duration. Completed product is in the cafeteria, along with bottled water. There are a couple of empty suites that can be used for the night as well. We’ll look further into longer-term on-site accommodations.”

The workers filed out, followed by the suspicious security men. Three of the more trustworthy types trailed them. Rollins stayed behind, along with the electrician’s apprentice.

“I’m Brandon Hackworth. Good to meet you, sir.”

“Thanks Brandon. You as well. Can you give me five minutes? I need to speak with Mr. Rollins here for a few,” Doug said.

“Sure—no problem.”

“Great—meet me in the plant engineering office. Three doors down that hallway on the left,” Doug said. The young man headed down the hallway.

“Mister Rollins, you have a couple men there that don’t look altogether honest.”

“They’re cousins of the former plant manager, Mr. Peterson. Not my hires.”

“Fire them. Immediately.”

“That could be more trouble than having them here, sir.”

“OK. Your discretion then. But I don’t want them in the plant at all. No access to product, supplies, or equipment. Is that manageable?”

“Absolutely. I’ll pair them up with known men and keep them busy.”

“Excellent. Now, another assignment—this one’ll be off-property. You OK with that?”

“Sure. I just told the assembly that for the benefit of appearing inflexible. Which I am, for most audiences. What do you need?”

“I need men—I need the men that operate this plant. We’re toast without them. I need you to track them down if they’re still in the area. Even in the outside chance that we can get the generators working, two dozen people cannot do the job of hundreds.”

“I can give it a shot. Not personally. I’ve got a couple men in touch with law enforcement. Might be better—safer—taking that route.”

“That works,” Doug said. “What’s the status of law enforcement in the city? Martial law I hear? Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Rob Dowling told me that you had to warn people off overnight. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Fair sized crowd of urban youth decided that they’d make a go on the east fence along the rail lines. Directed some fire near enough to make a point. A couple loners this morning. Fired a little closer that time.”

“Any issues with the police on either of those?”

“None. They don’t have time to look into it or resources to either help us or stop anyone. We’re all that stands between a plant that might recover or a looted burned out shell.”

“What’re the fires north of here?”

“It was a liquor distribution warehouse. It was overrun early Sunday morning. It’s been burning since then.”

“How are you getting information? Are you hearing anything from farther away?”

“Shortwave. Some of our radios are working, most aren’t,” Rollins said. “Fried, we assume. Batteries were good. As far as commercial bands, there are precious few stations broadcasting. Cell and landlines are done,” Rollins said.

“Making me wonder how we’re supposed to function as a business.”

“That’s yours to figure out. E-Branch.”

“Yeah. Lucky me.”