The stake president nodded, wise enough not to commit to a solution, especially considering that Jason Ross was, in all practical respects, not a church member. His dad was a member in good standing, but President Beckstead knew Jason had fallen away, and that gave him pause.
Burke continued. “But there’s a hiccup. Our bishopric asked today for us to give them command of all security, both their men and ours. As you can imagine, we’re reluctant to do that. It’d be crazy to remove experienced Special Forces soldiers from command and replace them with church leaders who have no combat experience. Did you ask them to do that?”
President Beckstead’s expression subtly changed now that he seemed to understand the purpose of this visit. The Ross’s were asking him to run interference with Bishop Decker’s bishopric. If he was like most Church leaders, President Beckstead would be slow to contradict one of his bishops, no matter how good Burke Ross’s solution sounded.
“Brother Masterson mentioned they might request that of you when they visited a couple of days ago.”
President Beckstead wasn’t just a church leader. He had worked in business for decades. He was obviously beginning to see that he had been used by Masterson to gain leverage, but Beckstead wasn’t going to contradict another anointed church leader.
“That seems like a reasonable request, at least to discuss. However, I wasn’t aware you had professional military with your group. That might change things.”
Burke pressed his advantage. “We have four Green Berets, three Navy SEALs and numerous Marines in charge of our forces. Would you consider authorizing those men to train, arm and lead all security forces in your stake?”
Beckstead waffled. “I think it’s a good idea. But, Brother Ross, you know how this works. Bishops aren’t called by me. They’re called by the Lord. As stake president, I don’t direct the bishops. I support them. The final answer on this question rests with Bishop Decker.”
Beckstead was overstating the independence of the bishops. Both Burke and Jason knew it. President Beckstead could direct Bishop Decker in this matter. But President Beckstead had already exposed Masterson’s exaggeration—the stake president hadn’t requested pooling of resources, nor had he requested that Bishop Decker command security forces. Masterson had lied.
Neighborhood violence would increase, given enough time. President Beckstead would eventually ask the Homestead to take over neighborhood security, but one or two families would have to die first. Even considering that reality, pushing the discussion at that moment would galvanize the stake president’s position and further delay a resolution. Jason ended the meeting on a positive note. “Very well, President, we needed some direction from you. Thank you for the time away from your garden. If you need anything, have your ham operator reach out. He knows our frequencies.” Father and son reached over to shake President Beckstead’s hand.
When they climbed back in the OHV, Jason grabbed his rifle and slipped it beside his seat.
Burke said, “That could’ve gone better.”
Jason’s first impulse was to disagree. “Even if President Beckstead gave us clear approval to handle defense, we’d still have to deal with Masterson. He’s not the kind of guy to go down without a fight. In any case, your church can’t move any faster than it’s moving, Dad.”
“It’s your church, too,” Burke said. Burke never missed a chance to point out that Jason was still Mormon, at least by baptism.
Jason smiled. “I’m not sure my church would be so slow to see the writing on the wall.” He thought about it for a second and recanted. “That’s probably not true. After all, my Christian church never even talked about being prepared for a disaster. At least your church preached preparedness.”
“Ah, ha!” Burke seized upon the opportunity to be right. “So you admit the Mormon Church accurately prophesied this collapse?”
“Yes. I suppose it did. So did Benjamin Franklin. And Rand Paul. And Ayn Rand. I’m pretty sure none of those folks were conversing with God. Hey, I’d be singing hallelujahs with your church if we could get the stake president to move things along.” Jason cocked his thumb at the president’s house.
“Yeah,” Burke agreed. “Something terrible is going to have to happen before these guys take this seriously, I’m afraid.”
Between the rumble of the OHV and his hearing aids, Burke wasn’t going to hear anything anyway so they drove home in silence.
Josh Myler commanded Quick Reaction Force Three, or QRF Three, as the guys called it. He hadn’t been a veteran. As a close friend of Jeff Kirkham, he’d had a lot of firearms training and, with the collapse, he had received a crash course in small unit command. With Jeff’s SOF guys running around the valley on missions, Josh had been tapped to lead one of the three elite teams of gunmen. Somewhere along the line, Josh heard that Emily Ross could shoot, and he wanted her for QRF Three. Emily had grown up in a family of shooters: her dad, a lifelong gun fanatic; her brother, a United States Marine; and all of her uncles were avid hunters. Emily killed her first deer—with a two-hundred-yard shot at nine years old.
In one of her favorite pictures of herself, sixteen-year-old Emily posed with an AR-15, mugging for the camera in one of the canyon bottom gun ranges at the Homestead. She smiled her million-dollar grin with a triple rivulet of blood running down her face. She had shot a steel target in the trees, and she had been hit in the head with a chunk of copper jacket. Emily finished shooting the rest of the course before heading to the ER for stitches. The doctor found the chunk of copper jacket under the skin of her scalp, and she’d kept it in her jewelry box ever since.
No panty-waist high school boy could hope to match her when it came to shooting. Emily smoked them all on the rifle and the handgun range, and that’s how she liked it.
Emily Ross, screwing up millions of years of gender bias.
She supposed her medical training had something to do with it, but getting on a QRF unit in the Homestead definitely said something about her shooting skill. Almost everyone on the three QRF teams had trained extensively before the stock market took a dump. They were the gun guys but, more important, everyone on the QRF units previously trained on dynamic shooting, land warfare tactics, and all of them had maintained their personal fitness.
Emily hadn’t done as much combat shooting as any of the guys on QRF Three, but she had been a distance runner and cyclist since the age of twelve. Also, the unit needed a corpsman—someone to treat battle trauma until they could get wounded back to the Homestead infirmary. Emily’s medical training, gun training and fitness made her the obvious choice, the weaker sex or not.
The Homestead had almost overdone it with doctors and nurses, making Emily one of the lesser-qualified medical professionals. They had three surgeons and one ER doc, plus a gaggle of seasoned nurses.
Emily would have rather been doing surgery, but a QRF slot was nothing to sneeze at. She would get top-notch combat training from the Special Forces guys, a few of whom were single and definitely hot.
And she would no longer have to spend six hours a day in a dirt hole, endlessly scanning the hillside. Being on the QRF meant being off guard duty. Membership definitely had its privileges. The QRF guys spent their days on the Homestead grounds, training and alert for a call. She would have to wear military kit all day and some nights, including a battle belt with a gun holster, bump helmet, chest rig with magazines, and a rifle. But Emily could live with that. Being on QRF meant you were a rock star in this new world. Being a female on the QRF meant you were a rock star among rock stars.
Some slice of her female brain lit up with the black guns, racy camo and macho coolness of it all. The handful of single guys around the Homestead thought of her as the ultimate bad-ass chick: gorgeous, smart and combat-ready.