“Just three weeks ago, the gang was making their way up the Agua Fria, and hit the little town of Mayer. About eighty of us from town, mainly men, went on a little preemptive strike when we heard that the gang had moved into the town of Humboldt. Blanca, Alex, and I were all on the raiding party. We knew that Prescott would be next, because we were just twelve miles up the road. A Navajo kid about thirteen years old, who escaped from Humboldt just after they arrived, gave us the layout. He even volunteered to go back into town to scout which buildings the looters were in. That was a real help in planning the operation.
“Our little raid didn’t have much in the way of military precision, but we sure did some damage. We knew that we couldn’t kill them all, so we decided that the thing to do was to concentrate on their vehicles, especially their armored cars and APCs. We hit them at just after three in the morning. Since we were all on foot or horseback the last two miles in, they didn’t know we were coming until we were already in their midst. They had the buildings that they were occupying lit up like Christmas trees. Our little Navajo scout had told us in advance which buildings they’d be in. We were only fully engaged for about five minutes. It was fast and furious, but like I said before, we did some seriousVan-dammage.
“In the first couple of minutes, we had the advantage, because most of the looters were asleep. They made me the point man, since I had the only suppressed weapon in the raiding party. When I shoot Winchester Q-Loads—
those are special low-velocity subsonic rounds—this thing doesn’t make much more noise than a nail gun.” Doyle held up the stubby Ingram M10 for a brief display, unscrewing the nomex-covered suppressor. “The term ‘silencer’ is really a misnomer. A ‘can’ like this is really just an elaborate sound muffler. Again, you can still hear the shot—sounds like a loud handclap. The normal sound is reduced so much that you can even hear the clack of the bolt going forward with each shot.”
Doyle screwed the suppressor back on the M10 and set it down on the window seat. “Sorry, I digress. Getting back to what happened in Humboldt….
I got the chance to personally drop three of their sentries, shooting my MAC
in the semiauto mode. I don’t mind saying that it felt real good, after what I’d seen them do in Wickenburg. At first, we were the only ones shooting. Once the looters rolled out of bed and started shooting back, it was another story.
They had a lot of fully automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers of some sort. They really started hosing us down. Before they did though, we had torched more than forty vehicles with Molotov cocktails. Apparently, we got every one of their APCs and armored cars.
“Our retreat out of Humboldt was, let’s say, ‘less than organized.’ Only twenty-nine of our original group made it back to Prescott alive by noon. Two more guys straggled in the next evening. Of the thirty-one that made it back, only three had been wounded, and those were all minor grazing wounds.
Oddly enough, all five of the men and women who were on horseback were among those to make it back without a scratch. Not even any of the horses were hit. Either they were real lucky, or cavalry is making a comeback. My 286
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cousin Alex never made it back from the Humboldt raid.” Ian skipped a beat, and then went on. “The looters didn’t show up the next day or even the day after. Blanca and I waited at the compound, with the Larons loaded, fueled, and ready to go.
“Three days after our raid, they came into Prescott, and they must have been plenty pissed. The gang rolled in just after dawn. They didn’t seem to care how many losses they were taking, and they immediately started to torch every building they got to. Blanca and I didn’t wait until they made it to the north side of town. Everyone at the compound was by then either in town manning the barricades, or had headed for the hills. Most of the remaining stuff at the retreat went with two families that had a pair of diesel pusher motor homes.
They were headed for Flagstaff or beyond.
“At that point, we realized that discretion was the better part of valor, so we took off, too. We used a nice long straight stretch of road that started a quarter-mile north of the compound. I had taken off and landed there many times before during the five years we were there. When we wheeled around after takeoff, we could see that almost half the buildings in the downtown area were on fire. We didn’t stick around to see how things ended, but I’m afraid that the looters must have taken the town. Even though they didn’t have any armored vehicles left, they had superior numbers and superior firepower.
“That day we flew to Cedar City, Utah. It was amazing, but they had almost two hundred gallons of av-gas still on hand at the airport. They said that they were going to get resupplied with fresh gas that was going to be trucked in from Oklahoma soon, so they were willing to sell it. We filled up every container we had. That batch of gas cost me twenty dollars in junk silver, my Olin flare gun, and a hundred rounds of nine-millimeter ball. Folks were fairly friendly there. Things are darned near normal there, compared to Arizona, but weird. They kept talking about the ‘Federal Provisional Government,’ the
‘Regional Administrator,’ and ‘Local Autonomy.’ It was like some freaky mantra they’d all been taught. It was creepy.
“The next day we flew from Cedar City to Brigham City, up in northern Utah. We had a letter of introduction from one family in Cedar City to their cousins, who had run the airport at Brigham City. They were talking about their new ‘Local Autonomy’ arrangement with the Federals there, too. We spent two days there. It took three separate transactions, but I managed to buy forty-one gallons of gas. In all, I swapped two hundred rounds of nine-millimeter hollow points, eleven dollars in junk silver, some hand tools, and a Fluke volt-ohm meter for the gas. A lot of it was low octane, and some of it hadn’t been stabilized and was pretty pukey looking. It had those white streamers in it. I added a bottle of octane booster that I had been saving, plus half a bottle of alcohol to soak up any water in the gas, and said some ‘Hail 287
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Marys.’ Luckily, the gas burned all right—just a few sputters—but it had me really worried.
“Next we flew to Grangeville, Idaho. That’s real pretty country up there on that Camas Prairie. We made inquiries and scrounged up another twenty-three gallons of gas. That took our last ten dollars in junk silver, plus another hundred and twenty rounds of nine-mil. At the rate I was bartering off our ammunition and silver, I was praying hard that you folks would still be here in one piece. It was a big gamble, but we sure knew we didn’t want to stay in Arizona, and we didn’t have anywhere else to go. Our only other chance might have been to go to Show Low,Arizona, to join the Cooper militia—they call it the Continental militia—but we didn’t personally know anybody there. We had heard they’re good folks, but it is awkward just dropping in on complete strangers. Like I say, we prayed that you would still be here. In times like these, you just have to have total faith in the Lord.
“Yesterday morning, we flew from Grangeville up to Bovill. The folks were really nice to us there, too. From what they said, there wasn’t hardly a drop of gas in town. They showed us on road maps and Forest Service maps how to find your place. We took off again immediately. Once we got here, and started circling, I recognized the layout from the way Dan Fong had described it to me. Speaking of whom, is Fong still alive?”