Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

The Provisional Government spread its sphere of influence rapidly. Any towns that resisted were quickly crushed. The mere sight of dozens of tanks and APCs was enough to make most townspeople cower in fear. Anything that the ProvGov couldn’t accomplish through intimidation, it accomplished with bribes. A new currency was spread around lavishly among the Hutchings cronies. Covertly, some criminal gangs were hired as security contractors and used as enforcers of the administration’s nationalization schemes. Some of these gangs were given military vehicles and weapons and promised booty derived from eliminating other gangs that were not as cooperative. Hit squads were formed to stifle any dissent. These did so through abductions, arson, and murder. Nobody was ever able to prove a link, but an inordinately large number of conservative members of Congress from the old government disappeared or were reported killed by bandits.

Some foreign troops were clothed in U.S. ACU digital or OCP camouflage. But most foreign troops stayed in their own uniforms and were used as shock troops, to eliminate any pockets of resistance. Disaffection with the new government smoldered everywhere that they went to pacify.

Within the first three months of launching the new government, Hutchings was in contact via satellite with the UN’s new headquarters in Brussels to request peacekeeping assistance. (The old UN building in New York had been burned, and the entire New York metropolitan region was nine-tenths depopulated and controlled by hostile gangs.) Hutchings had at first naively assumed that the UN’s assistance would be altruistic, with no strings attached. It was only after the first UN troops started to arrive in large numbers that it became clear that UN officers would control the operation. Eventually, Hutchings became little more than a figurehead. The real power in the country was held by the UN administrators. They had their own chain of command that bypassed the Hutchings administration, and they had direct control over the military.

One closely guarded secret was that Maynard Hutchings signed an agreement that promised payment of thirty metric tons of gold from the Fort Knox depository to defray the costs of transporting and maintaining a mixed contingent of UN peacekeepers, mostly from Germany, Holland, and Belgium. The gold was shuttled out of the country in half-ton increments in flights from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. There had also been the offer of Chinese peacekeeping troops, but Hutchings insisted that no Asian or African troops be used on American soil, saying, “I want it to be all white fellas that’ll blend in.”

In early December, Lars Laine made an appointment to meet with L. Roy Martin at his office. Although Laine’s daily “uniform” around the ranch was a pair of khaki pants and a digital ACU shirt-his best bet to blend in, given the predominant local sagebrush over sandy soil-he decided to brush his tan leather combat boots and wear his full ACU uniform. He even “de-sterilized” it, slapping on a Velcro flag on the shoulder, a subdued oak leaf on the center of his chest, and a “LAINE” nametape. Beth suggested that he wear his tan eye patch, saying, “It’s better you look rugged, rather than him spending the whole time eyeballing your glass eye.” Only Beth could say something like that to Lars without him feeling the least offended. She always knew what to wear to a party.

As Lars drove back from shopping, he passed a group of men who were constructing a reinforced fighting position beside the road on a low hill, about halfway between Farmington and Bloomfield. It was obviously part of the sheriff’s posse work on Bloomfield roadblocks that he had heard about. They observed his passing vehicle suspiciously, and two of them stepped toward their rifles until they saw the license plate prefix.

Lars drove up to the refinery’s gates and was not surprised to see that they were closed and manned by a pair of guards armed with both M1A rifles and holstered pistols. One of them had a clipboard. Lars rolled down his window and announced, “Major Lars Laine. I have an appointment with Mr. Martin.”

Lars was asked for his ID, and the guard took twenty seconds to closely examine it, comparing it with the notes on his clipboard. This obviously was not just a perfunctory “Wave them through” sort of stop. As the guard was looking at Laine’s driver’s license and military ID card, Lars sized up the guard: He was in his early thirties and had a buzz cut. He had the bearing of an Army or Marine Corps veteran. He wore unmarked ACUs, desert boots, IBA, and slightly scratched Oakley sunglasses and a tan baseball cap, for the full-on Special Forces “operator” look. And just as he was being handed back his ID cards, Lars noticed a woven texture on the back of the well-worn clipboard. It was one of the “executive protection” Kevlar clipboards that he had seen in Iraq. Clearly, these guys were not your everyday rent-a-cops.