Checking in for the Luftwaffe flight was a breeze, even though he didn’t have a scrap of documentation for the flight itself, just his movement orders. All of the arrangements had been made by phone, and the German officers had gotten the word that he was expected. They handed him a complex itinerary marked Luftfahrt-Bundesamt with typical German date formats and dotted times. It had just his name and rank typed at the top, yet they repeatedly assured him that was all the documentation he needed for every leg of his journey: “Ja, ja, Herr Major. Das ist alles.”
Thinking about the SIG 9mm pistol buried near the bottom of his duffel, he felt a bit of anxiety. Strangely, even the obvious presence of his M4 carbine was not questioned. Since nearly all of the Heer troops around him carried Heckler & Koch G36 rifles, it didn’t look out of the ordinary. Some of these troops carried their rifles by their long top-carry handles, and this almost made Andy laugh. It looked like they were carrying attaché cases. None of his bags were inspected. Only his military ID card and the flight itinerary sheet were checked.
The series of cargo shuttle flights, by way of Azerbaijan, took a grueling thirty-seven hours. The planes were too noisy for a comfortable conversation, and most of his fellow passengers—a mix of Heer ground troops and Luftwaffe airmen—seemed tipsy from preflight drinks. At least they shared Andy’s joy to be heading home.
8
Ankunft
“Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein Häuschen,
lhr klein Häuschen, ihr klein Häuschen.
Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein Häuschen,
Und die erste und die zweite Hypothek!”
—Popular drinking song in the Weimar Republic of Germany in 1922, referring to the runaway inflation of the period
Loosely translated: “We are drinking up our granny’s little house, Her little house, her little house. We are drinking up our granny’s little house, And the first and second mortgage!”
After what seemed like an eternity, Andy’s flight touched down at Rhein-Main air base. But the hurry-up-and-wait was far from over. He still had to travel to the Stryker Cavalry Regiment’s headquarters in Bavaria for his last few days of outprocessing.
He spent the next night holed up at an Air Force Bachelor Officers’ Quarters (BOQ), waiting for a flight to Ramstein Air Base—the base nearest to Vilseck with regularly scheduled flights.
The long-distance phone lines in the United States were “temporarily out of service,” so Andy was not able to call Kaylee. But he was able to e-mail her and get her e-mails in reply. They each sent dozens of notes during the two days and nights that Laine was stuck at Rhein-Main. For some reason the Skype voice and video service wasn’t working. He knew their headquarters were in Luxembourg, but he wondered where the Skype server was, and if that was causing the problem. He surmised that the server was probably in a fire-gutted building in some riot-ravaged city in the eastern United States.
It was while he was at Rhein-Main that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) announced that all commercial flights to the United States had been suspended. Kaylee’s e-mails then took on a frantic tone. In one, she wrote:
Andy:
GET HOME, SOON, DARLING!!! Ship yourself in a big Fed-Ex box if you have to! I am SOOOOO worried about you. I can’t sleep, thinking about this travel mess.
XXOOXX
—Kaylee
Although he was just as concerned as Kaylee, Andy tried to make his replies as upbeat as possible. In one of his last e-mails before checking out of the BOQ, he wrote:
Subject: Re:RE: [U] Outprocessing & Travel Home!
From: Laine Andrew CPT 2SCR (FWD)
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
My Darling Kaylee:
I cannot wait to hold you in my arms. Please remain prayerful, and do not worry. All that worrying doesn’t accomplish anything.
Read Philippians 4:6–7 and Psalm 46 and write them on your heart.
The commercial flights may have stopped, but there are still a few MAC flights. I also talked with a gal at the Military Travel Office, and she said that there are still flights going back and forth between Madrid and Mexico City. I will take a bus home from Mexico, if need be!!! Or I’ll get a flight to Havana and rent a row-boat. I mean it. I WILL get home. Trust in the LORD. I’ll get home, Deo Volente, but remember that we are on God’s timetable.
You are in my Constant Thoughts and Prayers,
With My Love,
Andy
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
If this e-mail is marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY it may be exempt from mandatory disclosure under FOIA. DoD 5400.7R, “DoD Freedom of Information Act Program,” DoD Directive 5230.9, “Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release,” and DoD Instruction 5230.29, “Security and Policy Review of DoD Information for Public Release” apply.
While waiting for his flight to Ramstein, Andy discovered that all of the ATMs on base were shut down. He also learned that the BX, commissary, and NAAFI store were all operating on a cash-only basis, with no checks, credit cards, EC Cards, or debit cards accepted. Only the Burger King was still taking credit cards, and because of this, it was deluged with customers.
The second evening that he was stranded, Andy stopped at the Burger King and ordered a Whopper Combo and a beer. The cashier said, “That will be ninety-six dollars, please.” Pulling out his VISA card, Laine muttered “That’s highway robbery.” A faceless voice behind him said, “Get used to it. It will be closer to two hundred bucks tomorrow.” He turned to see an Air Force major, dressed in an olive drab nomex flight suit, with his blue “p-cutter” cap tucked into one of his leg pockets. In a more distinct voice Laine replied, “Signs of the times, I suppose.”
Rio Arriba Youth Center, Gallina, New Mexico
October, the First Year
Shadrach Phelps sat on his bunk in the Rio Arriba Youth Center dormitory, looking glum. He was seventeen, but the other two boys were both only sixteen, so that made him the leader. He summed up the situation to them succinctly, “Basically, we’re screwed.”
As the Crunch set in, the boys had been warned that their days at the center were numbered. The school was about to be shut down. The Rio Arriba Youth Center was originally established in the 1940s as The Phelps School for Orphan Boys. It was sixty miles north of Albuquerque, on the edge of the Santa Fe National Forest, just north of the town of Gallina. Donations from churches had dwindled, so both the staff and the number of boys had been pared down substantially since their peaks in the early 1970s. When the Crunch started, there were just nineteen boys and three resident staff members remaining at the sprawling 160-acre center.
The orphans were given a sound education and taught the value of hard work—plenty of hard work. The center included eighty acres of irrigated hay fields, which provided some cash income for the school. It had two dormitories (one of them shuttered in the late 1980s), a classroom and multipurpose building, three staff residence buildings (one of which was unoccupied), a stable, and two large hay barns.
Shadrach Phelps was lanky, and dark-skinned—undoubtedly with at least half African-American blood—but his facial features showed some other, unidentified heritage. Like the other infants that had come to the orphanage without a name, he had been given the surname Phelps in honor of the school’s benefactor, a wealthy widow from Santa Fe. She had passed away in 1962. After her death, the school was supported by church donations from fifteen different churches in New Mexico and West Texas, and the annual sale of hay. The Rio Arriba County road department sporadically filled the school’s walk-in freezer with roadkill deer. All of the boys grew up accustomed to eating venison and learned how to field dress and butcher deer as taught by Diego Aguilar, who served as cook, wrangler, haying boss, and jack of all trades for the center.
Following the announcement of a school budget crisis and the planned closing
of the school, fifteen of the nineteen boys had been claimed by family members. As they packed up and left, the remaining boys without any known relatives began to despair. The departures left just Aaron Phelps, who was the headmaster’s favorite student, and the trio of Shad, Reuben, and Matthew. The headmaster made it clear that he would be adopting Aaron, but his stony silence about the other boys was devastating. The evening after Aaron moved into the headmaster’s house, Shad, Reuben, and Matthew gathered to pray and talk.
“The way I see it, everyone’s going to be starving here, inside a few weeks. The deer hunting has gone straight to la mierda since the mountain lion population explosion. And even if they wanted to grow row crops here instead of hay, the irrigation water will go away if the power goes out. This country is going back to a big desert, especially in the lower elevations.”
Reuben chimed in, “Diego says the grid will probably collapse in a few weeks.”
A voice from the hallway startled the boys, “That’s right, it’s going be a cold and hungry winter.” It was Diego Aguilar. Diego walked into the room and sat down on a wooden chair that faced the bunk beds where the boys sat. He folded his hands across his potbelly.
“You Phelps boys are, as they say, ‘in an unenviable position.’ You’ve got no familia. You are maybe just old enough to do a man’s job, but there are no jobs anyhow. You can maybe go beg for a place to stay, maybe with one of the churches that still send the support money. Or maybe you could ask for a job and bed and board on one of the reservations—”
Matthew interrupted. “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got a real last name. But we’re Indians who don’t even know what tribe we belong to! I was a baby that got left in a fruit box on the doorstep of the Lutheran church in Rio Rancho. All that they knew was my first name. ‘Please take good care of Matthew.’ That was all that the note said. Not even signed.”
Aguilar eyed the boys. Reuben Phelps and Matthew were obviously both American Indians, with round, fairly indistinct facial features that did not give a hint of a tribal connection. Hopi? Navajo? Zia? Mescalero? Probably not Apache.
The old Mexican said, “I’m sorry, you’re right. Forget the reservations. They’re practically starving there already. They been taking government handouts for too long.”
After a pause, Aguilar went on, “I talked with the headmaster. He says you are each welcome to take two good saddle-broke horses. Two apiece. I’ll get you all tacked up—each with one vaquero saddle and one pack saddle. The sleeping bags we got here are all cheapies, so you’ll each get two of them. That way you can put one inside the other so you can sleep warm.”
The boys looked at each other nervously and then turned toward Aguilar.
“I’ve got to warn you boys: Don’t go anywhere near Albuquerque or Santa Fe. There’s nothing but trouble in the cities these days. That’s where they’ll be hunting each other to eat. I’m not kidding. And stay away from the border. Hombres malos, there. And since winter is coming, you gotta stay out of the high country.”
The boys nodded.
Shad asked, “So which way do we go?”
“My mama told me, in lean times you head toward the bean pot. I think you should go right on through the Jicarilla Apache Res, and go up toward the northwest corner of the state. That’s pretty good country, and there, many places they have gravity-fed water—you know, from an irrigation ditch. Not like our water here, where water has gotta be pumped. You could stop at churches along the way and ask about finding work.”
Reuben offered, “Maybe we could get jobs as cowboys.”
“You’ve never roped a cow in your life,” Shad chided.
“I could learn.”
Diego Aguilar added: “He’s right. You could learn. So I’ll also give you boys las reatas. I still have several good lassos that your classmates never managed to destroy.” He stroked his chin. “But don’t forget, your main value is that you got strong backs. I’ll send you each with a pair of flat-forged hay hooks and a pair of heavy gloves. I know for sure you can move hay bales. I seen you do it. You boys all know how to shoot, too, so you’ll each get one of the school’s old .22 target rifles. They are single-shots and their barrels are heavier than an anvil. But at least you’ll be able to shoot rabbits. And from a long distance, seeing them, nobody will know that they’re just .22s, so hopefully they will leave you alone.”
Diego stroked his chin, and went on, “My plan is to send you boys with as much good camping gear as your pack horses can carry. Anything extra you can trade for food. Same for the .22 shells that I’m giving you. I won’t tell the headmaster how many bricks of .22 ammo you have until after you are long gone.”
The three boys nodded, and Diego continued, “The way I see it, he is treating you mean and sending you packing, so I have to balance it out by sending you out heavy, to give you the best chance possible.”
“We should be fine,” Shad added hopefully.
“I hate to see the headmaster cut you boys loose like this. But at least you’ve got some practical skills, and you’re hard workers, and you’ll have good horses under you.”
“Don’t worry about us, Diego,” Matthew assured him.
Shadrach stood up to shake Aguilar’s hand. “Thank you, sir. I promise you that we’ll look after each other. So, yeah, don’t worry about us. We’re Phelpses, and that means even though we aren’t brothers by blood, we’re still brothers in Christ.”
They spent the rest of the evening with Aguilar, packing.
9
Twisted
“Inflation is a special concern over the next decade given the pending avalanche of government debt about to be unloaded on world financial markets. The need to finance very large fiscal deficits during the coming years could lead to political pressure on central banks to print money to buy much of the newly issued debt.”
—Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, the Financial Times, June 26, 2009
Luke Air Force Base, Arizona
October, the First Year
The weeklong Diversity, Sensitivity, and Sexual Harassment class had one-hour lunch breaks. Even though his wife had packed him a lunch, Major Ian Doyle decided to hop in his car and take a drive around the base on his lunch hour. It was October, but still pleasantly in the high seventies and low eighties. Luke Air Force Base, adjoining the city of Glendale, Arizona, benefited from the sunny desert weather. This was one of the key reasons why it had been developed by the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s as one of its main centers for pilot transitional training and operational fighter squadrons. The base boasted “360 flying days a year,” and given the prevailing weather, most of those were VFR—visual flight rules—days.
The class that he was in gave Doyle the creeps. He couldn’t stand to stay in the building during the lunch hour. The greatest irony was that one of the lead civilian contract instructors, an acne-scarred woman in her thirties, was hitting on some of his classmates—both fellow pilots and some of the doctors from the 56th Medical Group—during breaks. She had even leered at Doyle and made some suggestive remarks, though he frequently made a show of twirling his wedding band. The chaplain was right: “Flee from sin!” The last thing he wanted to do was share his lunch hour with a liberal bed-hopper.
Under the Air Force’s new twisted rules on sexual harassment, officers of either sex of equal rank could be propositioned, as well as civilians within four steps of equivalent pay grade, all regardless of their marital status. And those rules only applied to duty assignments within each command. For individuals not assigned within the same command, an airman first class could date a colonel, or his wife, or both, without any repercussions. As near as Doyle could figure out, under the administration’s “New Century Military” guidelines, only children, pets, and livestock were verboten. But even those, he was told, were “now under study, as gray areas” and had just tentatively been given
the same “Don’t ask, don’t tell” protection that had previously been afforded to homosexuals. The change of policy made Ian wonder why he was sticking it out in the Air Force, hoping to make lieutenant colonel before his retirement. In recent years, promotions above O-3 had slowed to a snail’s pace as the Air Force contracted in size. Ian had already been passed over for promotion once, and he had his doubts about the next promotion board meeting.
On his drive, Doyle was amazed by what he saw. Luke Air Force Base was becoming a ghost town. His own wing, the 56th Fighter Wing, had just started a rotation to Saudi Arabia, but clearly all of the other “tenant” units at the air base were depopulating while still ostensibly “mission capable” and “in place.” The parking lot at the 56th Maintenance Group (MXG) was nearly empty, as was the lot for the Mission Support Group (MSG). The Base Exchange (BX) lot was also barren, since the BX had sold out of all their grocery inventory the week before—mostly to “blue card” and “gray card” retirees who lived in the surrounding communities. There were just a few would-be patrons seated in their cars. Ian assumed that they waited there in hopes of seeing an approaching delivery truck.
The entire Taiwan and Singapore air force training contingents had quietly decamped two weeks earlier, on the pretense of mobilization orders. There were no ritualistic drunken farewell parties this time. They just quickly got on commercial flights and left a considerable quantity of household goods behind in their haste.
The parking area for the 56th Med was less than half full, mostly with cars belonging to dental patients waiting to get some work done while any dental services were still available. Finally, closer to the hangars and flight line, he drove by the operational group’s buildings. He counted only five cars and SUVs there. “Sweet Jesus,” Doyle muttered to himself. “Where did everyone go?” Doyle had heard that there were desertions, but since he was no longer in a flightline squadron, he hadn’t realized the extent of the problem. He surmised that once the mess halls ran out of their limited food supplies and the MREs kept on hand for short-term contingencies were gone, airmen started deserting in droves. And from what he had heard, when they went, they took a lot of equipment, fuel, and nearly every scrap of food on base with them.
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