On the agenda for their weekly meeting, the DDP would decide who to back as mayor of Delta in the upcoming elections. Strangely, this decision would largely dictate the winner of the mayoral race. The DDP now boasted over three-hundred-fifty members, which might not seem like much until one considered the size of the town—just thirty-two-hundred souls.
But before talking about local politics, everyone wanted to talk about the teetering stock market and the nuclear event in Saudi Arabia. In preparation for what they hoped might be the collapse of the United States government, the militiamen had spent the day loading and re-loading AR-15 magazines, cleaning their guns, packing and re-packing their “go bags,” and laying out their military gear.
On top of current events, it wasn’t hard to imagine the Feds hitting Delta for reasons limited only by the imagination. After all, within recent memory, federal agents had slipped into town and absconded with David Bundy.
The door to the pizza parlor banged open, like in a Western movie. The men around the table looked up in unison at a wheezing boy standing in the doorway, trying to catch his breath.
“The Feds is here,” the boy shouted as he heaved. “They’re at the Delta Freeze!”
It didn’t make a lick of sense to anyone, but the emotion in the room brooked no hesitation. The men leapt from the bench seats, struggling to get out from under the table. They ambled to their trucks, working to get the blood flowing back into their middle-aged legs.
The militia communications officer jumped into the back of another man’s Ford F-350 and did his job with precision—triggering his preset message tree that would alert all three-hundred-fifty militiamen that an attack on the town was imminent.
Before the main body of the militia could muster, the leadership corps of the Patriots descended on the Delta Freeze in their pickup trucks. To their stunned eyes appeared the exact specter they had long feared and even dreamed about.
Three military Humvees and an M-1117 armored personnel carrier sat neatly parked in the Delta Freeze parking lot. Military men in camo wandered about, eating burgers and sucking on milk shakes with M4 rifles slung over their shoulders. It did not come as a shock to the militiamen that a black Chevy Suburban was parked right beside the military vehicles. An invasion of “black SUVs” and dark-souled federal agents had long been prophesied by anti-government pundits.
Clearly, the men in suits sitting at a picnic bench were “the Feds.” And, seemingly, they were there to suppress Delta, Utah at the behest of the federal government of the United States of America.
Without hesitation, the militiamen jumped out of their vehicles, bringing their rifles and handguns to bear. Within about two seconds, the California engineers and National Guardsmen went from eating a greasy lunch to staring down the barrels of a dozen guns. One of the Guardsmen dropped his root beer float. It hit the pavement and exploded, splattering a tan slurry over his spit-shined boots.
“Drop your weapons!” the leader of the Delta Desert Patriots shouted, just like he had heard on TV.
The National Guardsmen were only too willing to comply, given that their rifles were empty anyway.
“You at the picnic table, in the suits, drop your weapons.” The militiaman pointed his AR-15 at the engineers.
The engineers stared blankly. One of them had the presence of mind to put his double cheese burger down on the picnic bench and raise his hands in the air. The others followed suit.
“Drop your weapons!!” the militia boss roared again.
The engineer who had put his hands up replied, “Um, we don’t have weapons.”
The leader of the DDP turned to the man next to him and ordered, “Frisk them… Frisk them all.”
Without firing a shot, the Delta Desert Patriot militia had re-taken their hometown. Now, in addition to twenty-one prisoners, they possessed an armored vehicle, three Humvees, and a stack of M4 rifles, strangely devoid of bullets.
Within the hour, the only way into town and the power plant, Highway 6, was barricaded, armed and dangerous.
Despite exasperated explanations from the California Guardsmen and the electrical engineers, there was no chance the already suspicious militiamen would consider any story other than the one they had first imagined—that military vehicles and government men in suits had rolled into their town uninvited, intent on oppressing the Sovereign Republic of Delta.
There was no chance whatsoever that four hundred trucks, loaded with coal, would be getting to the power plant anytime soon.
Alameda, California
Three Miles Outside of Alameda Harbor
The helicopter circled the two Muslim villagers and their sailboat once again, and it became obvious that the sailboat was the subject of the helicopter’s interest. The gut-thumping throb of the rotor blades threw the Filipino sailors into a panic—Njay steered the boat while Miguel rushed to complete his ablutions to Allah in preparation for his death at the hands of the helicopter.
Njay shaded his eyes, searching for weapons. He knew little about military aircraft, but the helicopter was painted blue and white and it carried bulbous pods above the landing skids. Unless the pods were bombs, Njay could see no obvious threat. Still, the helicopter circled.
Even louder than the howling rotors, a loudspeaker blared from the aircraft. “Sailing craft, cut your engines immediately. We detect radiation aboard your vessel. Cut your engines immediately and wait to be boarded.”
Miguel paused in his ritual cleansing and shouted something to Njay that he couldn’t hear over the roar of the helicopter. Neither man understood the words from the loudspeaker, but the intent was clear. They were being intercepted. They would not reach Los Angeles. Njay ducked low behind the steering wheel and motored directly toward Alameda Harbor.
Miguel shouted again and pointed off their bow. In the distance, a large boat with a blaring siren and blue lights raced to block their course.
Njay’s loose bowels tightened like an angry snake. He began muttering prayers to Allah, rushed down the narrow stairs and, as the prayer reached its crescendo, pressed the green button.
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
Jason hung up and walked out on his deck. He had been on the phone all evening, trying to bring children, family and loved ones to the safety of the Homestead.
It was after 1:00 a.m. and the valley below sulked in a strange pool of darkness, speckled only by a few headlights weaving along the Interstate. The electricity had gone out in Salt Lake City that evening, and what had once been a beautiful view of twinkling lights had become a black crater. He could sense the hundreds of thousands of souls below tossing and turning in their sleep, praying the lights would come back on.
Jason had spoken with Jenna’s brothers. Both Tommy and Cameron were on the road, making a mad dash toward Salt Lake City and the Homestead. Jason had high hopes for Tommy—the run from Phoenix to Salt Lake would take him through four hundred miles of mountains and small towns without any foreseeable obstacles once they cleared the Phoenix metropolis.
Cameron and Anna were a different story. There was no telling if they had left L.A. soon enough, and there were still a number of population centers they would have to traverse, each one a formidable threat. The nuke off the coast was a wild card nobody had anticipated, and Jason couldn’t count the number of factors that might stop Cameron’s family from reaching Utah: civil disorder, traffic, government road blocks, gas shortages, medical quarantines…
Jason previously imagined that the Saudi attack and the stock market halts were worst-case scenarios. Now, with a nuclear detonation off the coast of California, he would have to completely redefine his definition of “worst-case scenario.” There were so many variables it made him dizzy.