Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

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

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

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

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

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

Olds rubbed his chin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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