Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

They spent the rest of the evening with Aguilar, packing.

9 Twisted

“Inflation is a special concern over the next decade given the pending avalanche of government debt about to be unloaded on world financial markets. The need to finance very large fiscal deficits during the coming years could lead to political pressure on central banks to print money to buy much of the newly issued debt.”

-Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, the Financial Times , June 26, 2009

Luke Air Force Base, Arizona October, the First Year

The weeklong Diversity, Sensitivity, and Sexual Harassment class had one-hour lunch breaks. Even though his wife had packed him a lunch, Major Ian Doyle decided to hop in his car and take a drive around the base on his lunch hour. It was October, but still pleasantly in the high seventies and low eighties. Luke Air Force Base, adjoining the city of Glendale, Arizona, benefited from the sunny desert weather. This was one of the key reasons why it had been developed by the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s as one of its main centers for pilot transitional training and operational fighter squadrons. The base boasted “360 flying days a year,” and given the prevailing weather, most of those were VFR-visual flight rules-days.

The class that he was in gave Doyle the creeps. He couldn’t stand to stay in the building during the lunch hour. The greatest irony was that one of the lead civilian contract instructors, an acne-scarred woman in her thirties, was hitting on some of his classmates-both fellow pilots and some of the doctors from the 56th Medical Group-during breaks. She had even leered at Doyle and made some suggestive remarks, though he frequently made a show of twirling his wedding band. The chaplain was right: “Flee from sin!” The last thing he wanted to do was share his lunch hour with a liberal bed-hopper.

Under the Air Force’s new twisted rules on sexual harassment, officers of either sex of equal rank could be propositioned, as well as civilians within four steps of equivalent pay grade, all regardless of their marital status. And those rules only applied to duty assignments within each command. For individuals not assigned within the same command, an airman first class could date a colonel, or his wife, or both, without any repercussions. As near as Doyle could figure out, under the administration’s “New Century Military” guidelines, only children, pets, and livestock were verboten. But even those, he was told, were “now under study, as gray areas” and had just tentatively been given the same “Don’t ask, don’t tell” protection that had previously been afforded to homosexuals. The change of policy made Ian wonder why he was sticking it out in the Air Force, hoping to make lieutenant colonel before his retirement. In recent years, promotions above O-3 had slowed to a snail’s pace as the Air Force contracted in size. Ian had already been passed over for promotion once, and he had his doubts about the next promotion board meeting.

On his drive, Doyle was amazed by what he saw. Luke Air Force Base was becoming a ghost town. His own wing, the 56th Fighter Wing, had just started a rotation to Saudi Arabia, but clearly all of the other “tenant” units at the air base were depopulating while still ostensibly “mission capable” and “in place.” The parking lot at the 56th Maintenance Group (MXG) was nearly empty, as was the lot for the Mission Support Group (MSG). The Base Exchange (BX) lot was also barren, since the BX had sold out of all their grocery inventory the week before-mostly to “blue card” and “gray card” retirees who lived in the surrounding communities. There were just a few would-be patrons seated in their cars. Ian assumed that they waited there in hopes of seeing an approaching delivery truck.

The entire Taiwan and Singapore air force training contingents had quietly decamped two weeks earlier, on the pretense of mobilization orders. There were no ritualistic drunken farewell parties this time. They just quickly got on commercial flights and left a considerable quantity of household goods behind in their haste.