by TW Powell
“Adam, go saddle up Vlad and grab your sniper rifle.”
Tom saddled Little Sorel and harnessed Miss Daisy, then called for Grandpa and Junior.
“Adam, make sure you have your Glock and enough food and water for a couple of days.”
“Already done, Dad, I mean, Sergeant.”
“Private Jackson, haul ass up to Black Bird Canyon and take up a concealed position with a good line of sight down onto US 50. I will follow on Little Sorrel with Miss Daisy in tow. At sundown Lieutenant Smith should meet me. If that meeting goes south, at your discretion, take action to eliminate hostiles, then return to Stonewall Ranch and report to Junior and Grandpa.”
Adam shouted, “Sempre Fi!” as Vlad nearly broke out from under him.
“Junior, Dad, get the Ranch ready for war. Hope I’m wrong.”
Tom Jackson gave Little Sorrel an ever so slight nudge and he immediately broke into a canter. Miss Daisy was snorting and braying as she easily kept pace with Sorrel.
It was approaching sundown when Tom arrived at the rendezvous. He spotted a tin can off the side of the road. He placed the tin can out in the middle of Peoples’ 50 and waived his hat. A .50 caliber round hit the can dead center, blowing it off the road.
Tom looked around trying to acquire the shooter, then just chuckled to himself, “Ol’ Dead Eye has already displaced, no locating that boy now.”
Tom then hid in the scrub not far off the road. Just a couple of minutes later, a green box truck slowed almost to a stop, then pulled off the road, concealing itself in the scrub. Captain Delvin Smith got out. He appeared to be alone. Tom then emerged from hiding but kept his AR-15 pointed in Delvin’s direction.
“Whoa there, Cowboy, you can be at ease.”
Tom lowered his rifle and saluted. Delvin returned the salute.
“Sergeant Jackson, sorry for the short notice, but I need your help.”
“What are your orders, sir?”
“No Tom, this is personal. I need your help.”
“What’s wrong, Slick?”
Delvin then motioned for Tom to follow him around back of the truck. He then raised the back door and pulled his mother’s shrouded corpse out onto the lift gate.
“Delvin, what in the world?”
Without speaking, Delvin pulled apart the sheets, uncovering his mother’s ashen face, “When I stopped by the house this morning, I found her dead on the floor.”
Delvin broke down crying.
Thomas reached out and grabbed Delvin under the arms to prevent him from collapsing onto the pavement. Tom then hugged his old comrade for what seemed like an eternity. These two men had one of those relationships that very few men ever experience. They trusted each other implicitly, they were of one mind, they respected each other, and they were Marines.
“Tom, that Godless bunch would burn Mom like so much trash. She deserves better than that.”
“Delvin, you’re family. I never had the pleasure of meeting your Mom, but she’s family too. Don’t you worry. Miss Daisy will be pleased to carry her down to the Ranch, tonight. We’ve got an honorable place for her down there.”
Tom then waived his Stetson again and hollered, “Adam, come on down.”
Delvin’s mood lightened just a bit, “Sweet Jesus, Tom, don’t tell me that your Dead Eye son had me in the crosshairs of his .50 caliber sniper rifle ever since I arrived.”
“Afraid so, mi amigo, at least he didn’t shoot.”
Both men broke up laughing and crying, just a little, and hugged again.
Adam made it down to the road in a matter of seconds, then saluted Delvin.
“You can be at ease Private Jackson. And oh yeah, thanks for not shooting me.”
Adam just snickered and answered Delvin with a wry smile and a shrug.
“Adam, mount that black demon of yours’ and get down to the Ranch ASAP. Tell Grandpa John and Junior that we need a grave dug right away. Make sure your Mom understands the grave is for Delvin’s Mom, not me. Tell Grandpa to pick out a special spot for Ms. Smith.”
Adam was ready this time, Vlad didn’t break from under him, “Nice try, Vlad!”
Delvin and Tom secured Mom to Miss Daisy. Tom was anxious to get Mom down to the
Ranch during the cool of the evening.
“Thomas, thank you brother. Before they lay her to rest, do you think Doc Pham could check her out for cause of death. Nothing invasive, I just need to know it wasn’t foul play.”
“Done! Don’t give it another thought.”
“I need to see you back here same time tomorrow. We have a mission.”
“Yes sir, Lieutenant Smith.”
“That’s Captain Smith, Sergeant,”
Enriched & Depleted
The 30 mm rounds fired by Apache helicopter gunships and Warthog ground attack aircraft are composed of Depleted Uranium. Uranium is very heavy, having an atomic mass of 238. For comparison, Gold has an atomic mass of 197 and Lead has an atomic mass of 207. The kinetic energy of a bullet, its “stopping power”, is proportional to its mass (its weight). That’s the reason Lead was commonly used in bullets. Metallic Uranium’s density is 70% higher than Lead.
Uranium has three common isotopes (forms): U238, U235, and U234.
99.3% of Earth’s Uranium is U238, only 0.3% is U235, and just a trace is U234.
U235 is the fissionable isotope. U235 powers nuclear plants and is also used in nuclear weapons. Natural Uranium ore must be enriched to increase its U235 content, thereby making it useful as nuclear fuel and weapons grade Uranium.
Low enriched Uranium (LEU) typically contains 5% U235. LEU is fuel for power plants.
Highly enriched Uranium (HEU) contains up to 85% U235. HEU is weapons grade.
Many tons of Uranium ore must be processed to produce a single ton of HEU, weapons grade Uranium. The waste product from the enrichment process is Depleted Uranium. Depleted Uranium only contains half the U235 found in Uranium ore. DU is less radioactive than Uranium ore and much less radioactive than enriched Uranium.
Both HEU and its byproduct, DU, are critical components of modern weapons.
When The Collective unilaterally scrapped its nuclear weapons in 2027, all that HEU didn’t just disappear. Quite a bit went to the People’s Republic of China. A good quantity went to the Islamic Republic of Iran and was subsequently dropped on Israel in 2030. The balance of that HEU was stored in perhaps the world’s most secure location. It was worth far more than gold.
Following the Peoples’ Revolution, The Collective immediately shut down all nuclear power plants across the PUS. That LEU fuel from those shuttered plants was sent to Oak Ridge, Tennessee for further enrichment to HEU.
Although The Collective talked a good talk about universal nuclear disarmament, the Oak Ridge Racial Reparations Enrichment Facility continued to process Uranium ore mined in the PUS. That plant was run by Chinese managers and Chinese technicians, while slave laborers did all the manual labor.
The cost of enriching Uranium at Oak Ridge was unbelievably low. Labor was free, industrial hygiene was nil, and environmental regulations did not apply. Life expectancy of the workers was very short. Oak Ridge had become a radiological death camp.
All that enrichment produced lots of DU, which was a hot commodity for weapons contractors. The DU was stored at the same secure, central location as the HEU.
Ely
Ely was an easy 3-hour drive east of Black Bird Canyon. Ely is even colder country than Austin. Sitting at 6,400 ft. elevation, frosts have been recorded there in every month of the year. Although it was summertime in Nevada, Delvin was sort of looking forward to the cool, clear, high desert air in Ely.
Ely, like Austin, was another rest stop along the “Loneliest Road in America”, but Ely was a more substantial town with a population of about 4,000. The electricity was still on in Ely, no thanks to The Collective. A large wind farm lay just thirty miles to the east and numerous small photovoltaic solar farms were close by. Many homes and businesses
had their own solar panels and/or wind turbines. Ely was on the grid, but not The Collective’s grid. Ely was on the Deseret grid.
It was close to midnight when Delvin approached Ely. He parked his truck at the large, open pit, copper/gold/molybdenum mine just a couple of miles west of town. This mine was not run by The Collective, but it was sanctioned by the PRC. To the Chinese, this mine was just another supplier of gold, copper, and molybdenum.
Delvin had left his Peoples’ Phone at the house in Stockton, so he couldn’t be tracked that way. Just in case someone spotted his truck over by Ely, they would see it parked at the Robinson Mine which was the destination Delvin had previously noted in his logbook.
Delvin pulled his trusty bicycle from the back of his truck and headed into town. At the narrow entrance to Lane Canyon, just a mile west of Ely, Delvin paused to read the very large, illuminated sign, “Prepare to Stop – Checkpoint Ahead”. Concrete barrier wall was arranged in a zig-zag pattern to prevent anyone from barreling through the checkpoint that Delvin guesstimated to lie about 100 yards ahead. The checkpoint was awash with floodlights. Two .30 caliber machine guns, one on either side of the road, were well fortified in concrete pillboxes located further up the sloping canyon walls.
Delvin cautiously approached the checkpoint. He could only guess what other ordnance guarded the canyon entrance. Surface-to-air missiles ? Almost certainly. Minefields? Probably.
Delvin, suddenly swung his head to the left, “What in the hell?”
He was reacting to what sounded like a swarm of angry hornets. Then, he caught just the briefest of glimpses of a small drone heading west along US 50.
Glancing back toward the roadblock, he spied the flag. The flag was dominated by a field of blue with an eagle in the center, somewhat resembling the Great Seal of The United States, except a beehive was emblazoned upon the eagle’s shield. Apologies to Dorothy, but Delvin was not in “Kansas” anymore.
Two sentries manned the checkpoint. Well, Delvin could see only two. They were dressed in full desert camo combat fatigues with body armor and Kevlar helmet. Both were armed with M4 Carbines. The sentries were young, White, about Delvin’s height, and in tip top shape.
“Halt. ID please.” The right-hand sentry raised his right palm, backing up his verbal command.
Delvin stopped and slowly got off his bike, “Good evening. Is it OK if I get my pass out of my jacket pocket?”
The left-hand sentry calmly replied, “Keep your hands down at your sides, please.”
The sentry slung his carbine, walked up to Delvin and patted him down, “He’s clean.”
Delvin nodded and replied, “My pass is in my inside jacket pocket.”
The sentry reached inside Delvin’s jacket and pulled out the pass that Spook Jones had given him onboard the Namazu. The pass was in order.
The sentry returned the pass to Delvin with a smile, “Welcome to Deseret, Mr. Smith.”
Delvin took notice of the Private’s name tag, “Thank you, Private Olsen. If you check the saddlebags on my bicycle, you’ll find a loaded Glock. Best we have no surprises.”
The Private’s smile disappeared. He was just a little surprised and hesitated for a moment before responding, “Thank you for the heads up, Mr. Smith. Please remain where you are with your hands at your side.”
Private Olsen stepped over to Delvin’s bike and pulled the Glock out of the saddlebag. He promptly removed the clip from the pistol, making sure there wasn’t a round in the chamber.
“Mr. Smith, we will hold your sidearm here until you depart Deseret. You will be leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow afternoon. Thank you.” Delvin was really thinking, “So much for shooting anybody.”
Deseret
On July 24,1847, Brigham Young arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley as the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons. Later that year, Young became President of the LDS Church and, over the next few years, 16,000 Mormons emigrated to what later became the State of Utah.
The emigration was prompted by severe, and sometimes violent, persecution of the LDS Church in the East. This persecution was a result of some controversial doctrines of the LDS Church, the most notable of which was the doctrine of plural marriage, polygamy.
In 1846, when the Mormons began their westward migration, Utah, and what later became the southwestern states of Arizona, California, Nevada, and New Mexico, were Mexican territory. In that same year, The United States and Mexico went to war, ostensibly over the exact location of the southern border of Texas. The US insisted the Rio Grande was that border.
The US president, James Knox Polk, was a leading proponent of the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”. This doctrine contended that it was the manifest destiny of The United States of America to stretch across North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The reluctance of Mexico to sell this territory to the young and growing United States and a perceived Mexican insult during negotiations, offered Polk the perfect opportunity to realize that destiny by declaring war on Mexico in 1846. In early 1848, after a continuous string of defeats, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded those vast western lands to The United States.
The LDS elders and President, Brigham Young, hurriedly put together a petition for statehood for the territory of Deseret, which comprised what later became the states of Utah and Nevada, and parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wyoming.
Congress deemed this plan just a little too ambitious. As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress established the Territory of Utah comprising that part of the proposed Deseret Territory that is now known as the State of Utah.
The Mormons played a major role in the settlement of the Old West. That role had been mostly unrecognized in popular culture. The Collective was desperate to erase what little recognition had been given to the LDS Church.
The term “Deseret” was taken from the Book of Mormon and meant “honeybee”. It signified industry. In the mid-1800s many more Mormons migrated to Utah, including many Mormons from Scandinavia and Europe. Through hard work and personal initiative, these immigrants made the desert bloom.
On the Mound
Delvin mounted his bicycle, sans Glock, passed through the checkpoint, and cycled the final mile into Ely. As he entered town, Delvin hung a right onto 1st Street and pedaled a couple of blocks further to the baseball field. He pitched camp under the open bleachers. His very small campfire wasn’t noticeable. It was late, the streets were deserted, and the scent of woodsmoke from the town’s numerous woodstoves perfumed the air.
Delvin was well prepared. He unrolled his sleeping bag on top of his foam camping pad and turned in for the night. The cool, clean mountain air, flavored with just a touch of woodsmoke, was very soothing. Our man, Slick, fell into a well-deserved deep sleep.
The park’s groundskeeper was out on his zero-turn radius mower at 6 a.m. Delvin packed up while the groundskeeper was still mowing the outfield. Since his ordeal out on The Bay, Delvin hadn’t felt like eating anything. He was starving. It was breakfast time.
As Delvin slowly bicycled his way along Main St., it was just as if he had entered an alternate reality. Although it was early morning, the streets were bustling with activity. Sure, there was much more horse powered transportation than back in the real world, but shops were open, and everything was clean. No broken window glass, no chipped and peeling paint, no discarded drug paraphernalia, and the smell, there was no stench. Shopkeepers were out washing the sidewalks and the delivery drivers were unloading and loading goods. He slammed on the brakes as a traffic cop held up a STOP sign, allowing a school bus to pass through the town’s busiest intersection.
Delvin just stood there motionless on his bike, taking it all in, he was entranced.
After a few seconds, the cop approached, “Sir, are you OK?”
A single tear ran down Slick’s cheek, “Yes, officer, I’m more than OK. Thank you.”
&n
bsp; Delvin had just been reminded of everything he was fighting for.
Rick’s Grill was located in the center of town, across from the courthouse. An OPEN sign hung in the window. Delvin walked in, took a seat, and ordered the “Ranch Hand’s Breakfast”, three eggs, hash brown potatoes, ham steak, sourdough toast, and a glass of milk. Coffee was not on the menu.
As he was devouring his breakfast, he thought to himself, “Too bad Junior isn’t here to enjoy this.”
After finishing a glass of apple juice, Delvin plunked down a real silver dollar down on the table and got up to leave.
The waitress asked, “Mister, wait for your change.”
Delvin smiled, then tossed her another silver dollar, “That’s for asking!”
The rest of the morning was spent just riding around town. Delvin was enjoying his brief vacation in America. About 11:30, he made his way back to his secluded spot under the bleachers. Then he watched and waited.
At a quarter of noon, nine young men walked onto the field carrying bat bags. They were dressed in tee shirts and denim pants with a baseball cap on their head, all camo. They glanced around for a bit, then each man walked off the field in a different direction and disappeared amongst the trees and buildings surrounding the ball diamond.
At precisely noon, an older gentleman, perhaps in his early 50s, walked out to the pitcher’s mound. He was dressed the same as the nine younger men but carried no bag. The man was a little taller than Delvin, maybe 6’2”, White, fit, and had that Scandinavian look about him.
Delvin mused to himself, “OK, Smith, time to shit or get off the pot.”
With that, Delvin made his way out to the mound. As he approached the mound, the “pitcher” turned his way.
“Good morning. Might you be Mr. Smith, Mr. Delvin Smith?”