“Jesus, it won’t take much. Just send thirty soldiers plus several hundred coal trucks. Your men don’t even need to bring guns.”
“I understand, sir,” the general pressed. “I apologize, but I don’t believe the Guard possesses that many trucks equipped to move coal, nor do we have the truck drivers.”
Robbie spoke up for the first time on the call. “I can get the trucks and drivers. Where and when should they meet up with your men, General?”
“Oh-seven-hundred tomorrow morning in Barstow.”
“Done,” Robbie agreed.
“Now THAT’S what I’m talking about, gentlemen,” the Cowboy Governor gushed. “THAT’S how shit gets done!”
3
“THIS IS JT TAYLOR. PIRATE of Info Porn, Alcoholic of the Apocalypse… Drinkin’ Bro Extraordinaire… broadcasting from a stolen vehicle courtesy of the United States Army, Fort Bliss. Thank you, boys, for the sweet-ass ride and the huge pile of MREs.
“Yes, folks, I’m rolling in a vintage SINCGARS Humvee with a rock-hard 8 meter antenna, on a personal JIHAD against the US Guv and their bullshit propaganda. I’m collecting pirate news from Drinkin’ Bro servicemen and babes all over the globe, receiving on the 49 meter band, 6000kHz right on the nose. If you’re a Bro or Bro-ette, and you’re in the shit, give me a jingle on the radio tonight and we’ll tell the world what’s REALLY going on.
“According to Drinkin’ Bro Reggy Ingleson, specialist in the Marine Corps in the sandbox right now, that dirty bomb royally cocked-up the port and pumping station at Abqaiq. Is that even how you say that? Ub-Kack? Ab-cock? Whatever. It’s just another greased Arab shithole now.
“For some reason that bomb gave the stock market whiskey dick, then the lights started flickering in southern California. What do these two things have in common? Who the fuck knows? Anything’s possible at this point…
“A Navy commo babe, whose name I will only mention in the boudoir, called in last night from the fleet in the Persian Gulf and let it slip that they’re steaming toward the Suez Canal. That should get exciting. Kind of makes you wonder about the Israelis and 300 million pissed-off Arabs and what they’re going to do now that the Middle East has become an even bigger dumpster fire. Let it all burn, I say. Let that dumpster burn. But then again, I’m drunk as shit.
“I gotta go now and find a new hole to hide in. If you’re a Drinkin’ Bro in Fort Bliss, give me a call tonight at 6000kHz and let me know if they’re missing their Humvee. Until they hit me with a Tomahawk cruise missile, I’ll be on this freq, every night, dealing you into the truth they don’t want you to hear. Until then, drink on, sweet princes. Fuck censorship and pass the bourbon.”
Interstate 15
Barstow, California
Four hundred semi-trucks with coal trailers stretched from the megalithic roadside McDonalds in Barstow, California, almost five miles down the shoulder of the I-15 Freeway.
The general hedged his bet like a true career Army officer, sending only thirty guys, two M1117s—Armored Security Vehicles—and half a dozen Humvees. Even the M240s, the belt-fed machine guns, had been stripped from the M1117s for this “training mission,” as the general had called it when he telephoned his counterpart in the Utah National Guard. Not a single live round was to be found anywhere on the men or the vehicles, despite the fact that they carried rifles and sidearms. The general wasn’t willing to put his career in the hands of a bunch of weekend warriors running around the West with live ammunition.
Just to cover his own ass, the L.A. mayor sent a Chevy Suburban full of engineers from the L.A. Department of Water and Power to meet the convoy and accompany them to the power plant. The Suburban was black. As it turned out, that would matter more than anyone might have guessed.
At 7:30 a.m., the convoy headed toward Sevier, Utah.
As planned, when the convoy reached the junction of I-70 and I-15 in southern Utah, one of the M1117s and three of the Humvees peeled off with the semis to accompany them to the coal mine. The California governor had spoken with the CEO of SUFCO mine and received approval for his plan to ship the coal to the Delta power plant in the semi-trucks from California. The governor figured he would ask for forgiveness later from the Utah environmental people.
The remaining armored troop transport, the other three Humvees, and the Suburban full of engineers continued on the I-15 Freeway, heading to the Intermountain Power Plant in Delta, Utah.
Hubb Pizza Co.
Delta, Utah
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center—the consumer advocate group that prides itself on being “the premier U.S. group fighting hate groups”—the State of Utah has thirty-seven “anti-government patriot militias.” Strangely, the SPLC publishes its own intelligence report on these groups and, buried forty-two pages into the report, the Delta Desert Patriots can be found, marking them with an asterisk as a “Right-wing Militia.”
A person could easily forgive the Delta Desert Patriots, and anyone residing in Delta, Utah, for being pissed off. The three-hundred-fifty-mile-long Sevier River flows muddy and sulfurous almost from its beginning in the mountains of Central Utah. The tail end of this river, by the time it gets to Delta, Utah, runs like a stinking river of Maalox. With this lone water source, Delta residents grow a patchwork of thin alfalfa fields that serve as the only buffer between them and a massive, blighted desert.
Calling it a “desert” elicits images of cactus, mesquite groves and plodding tortoises. Instead, the land around Delta looks like Jesus himself salted the ground, killing every living thing.
The Delta Desert Patriots might never have made it onto anyone’s watch list, given that Delta is a smudge on the map, known only for its coal power plant and that it once hosted a World War II Japanese internment camp.
But, on April 12, 2014, the world got an eyeful of the rising anger of the Delta Desert Patriots when federal BLM agents attempted to round up the cattle of Cliven Bundy. Bundy had been grazing his cattle on disputed land claimed by the federal government in nearby Nevada. When several hundred local protestors showed up in the middle of nowhere, armed to the teeth with assault rifles and six-guns, and proceeded to stare down U.S. federal agents, the world took notice. The folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center nearly made a mess in their pants with anti-redneck fervor.
Among those railing against the federal government was none other than David Harold Bundy, son of the then-famous Cliven Bundy. Almost two years after the face-off between the cattlemen and the BLM, federal law enforcement agents closed in on Bundy while he re-roofed his home on the edge of Delta, Utah. They arrested him for his part in the stand-off and quietly whisked him out of town.
While he wasn’t an anointed leader of the Delta Desert Patriots, Bundy was certainly a native son—loved by some and respected by all in the town of Delta. With his arrest, and with the bubbling spread of anti-federal sentiment in the deserts and plains of America, the ranks of the Patriots swelled exponentially. At least in the town of Delta, the militia had gone mainstream.
The same morning that the Intermountain Power Plant began to fail in its job of keeping the lights on in sunny southern California, the leadership of the Delta Desert Patriots met at Hubb Pizza Company, just off the main drag in Delta.