Doyle pulled his car off to the side of the road and pulled out a thermos of café con leche and his lunch, two leftover baleadas—Honduran-style burritos—and an apple. He started munching absently, hardly noticing the taste. He was playing the Passion, Grace, & Fire CD with John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucía, and Al Di Meola. But since he was so absorbed with worrying about his homeschooled daughter, Linda, he didn’t pay much attention to the music. He turned on the car radio and punched the pre-set for KNST 790 AM. The news announcer was repeating an FAA order that all commercial airline flights in the United States had just been temporarily suspended because there was unrest in so many American cities, and in several instances planes had been hit by gunfire as they made takeoffs and landings.
Ian shouted, “No!” and slammed his fist on the dashboard.
Linda was on her annual six-week-long Grandmom and Grandpop trip, staying with Ian’s parents in Plymouth, Michigan, an upscale suburb of Detroit. Linda was eleven years old and this was the first year that she had made the trip alone, escorted on the flight by an airline stewardess. After making the trip for several years in a row, accompanying their daughter, Blanca decided to stay home and relax and do some oil painting and pastels. “She’s old enough to fly up there herself,” Blanca had told Ian. “There’s no connecting flight. It’s a direct shot from Phoenix Sky Harbor to Detroit.”
When class was over, Ian drove home to Buckeye, a thirty-five-minute commute from the base. It was originally a farming town, but it had gradually become a commuter bedroom and retirement community. The housing developments were an odd mix of 1950s and 1960s one-story houses with composition roofs, interspersed with neo-southwestern developments of earth-tone stucco three-thousand-square-foot McMansions built in the 1990s and in the decade of the aughts, just after the turn of the century. Interspersed between these developments, there were still many fields, mostly cultivated with cotton and alfalfa. There were also a couple of large dairy farms that produced milk and cream for Glendale and Phoenix.
The rent in Buckeye was just half what it would have been in Glendale. They also had benefited from a lower crime rate and much less smog. Ian had picked their house because it had an extra deep garage that had room for his hobby airplane, a Laron Star Streak, which was normally kept in its trailer with the wings removed.
The night before, Ian had had a lengthy discussion with Blanca. They were horribly worried about their daughter.
“I think that on Saturday I should fly up to Detroit personally to get her.”
“But, Ian, all of the flights are cancelled.”
“No, I mean a cross-country, in a D-model Viper. They’re two-seaters. I can zip up there to get her and be back all in a day—that is, if my dad drives her down to meet me at the airport.”
Blanca frowned and shook her head, but Ian continued in rapid fire: “Wayne County Airport is too big and it’s close to Toledo, so that’s too risky. The Canton-Plymouth airport is only two miles out of town, but it’s only a 2,500-foot strip. I’m sure you remember, an F-16 officially needs 8,000 feet, but it’s actually under 4,000 in a pinch. I suppose that’s a little hard on the brakes. Like my F-16 Transition instructor used to say: ‘If it’s a short strip, then pop the ’chute and stand on those brakes, boy!’ So I checked on the Internet last night: the Detroit Lakes–Wething strip is 4,500 feet. I could do that easily in good weather.”
“Are you crazy, Ian? You’ve got sixteen years in. Just four years to go until you qualify for retirement. You steal a plane—”
“Borrow a plane,” Ian interrupted.
“—you’ll get court-martialed.”
“I’ll just log it as a cross-country,” Ian argued.
“You put a civilian passenger in a fighter, it’s a court-martial offense. You file a false flight plan, its at least an Article 15, maybe a court-martial. You make an unauthorized landing on a civilian strip of insufficient length, also probably a court-martial. Some busybody writes down the tail number with an ‘LF’ prefix, and the finger is pointing right at you. No way! You cannot play ‘You Bet Your Bars’ when you’ve got sixteen years in. Es imposible.” After a pause she added, “That’s muy loco!”
Doyle meekly dipped his head to his chest. He said, “Look, I also thought about flying the Star Streak up there, but that would take at least six hops each way: there’s only two seats. It would be a six-day round trip for one of us. I can’t get that much leave on short notice.”
“I agree, the Star Streak is out. With that many hops, I don’t know where for sure you’d get avgas. You could get stranded in the middle of nowhere with no fuel.”
Blanca went on: “We just have to wait until the riots die down in Detroit, and wait until they start up the commercial flights again, or you take a couple of days leave, and one of us—or maybe both—drives up there and back.”
Ian frowned. “Do you know how many cities we’d have to drive through to get to Plymouth? The rioting is too unpredictable. We’d have to zigzag up there. And how will we get gas to get that far and back?”
Blanca hugged him, and said, “Look, this is just a temporary thing. Your parents, they live in a very safe neighborhood. The riots and lootings, they are just in Detroit, not any further. We wait until things calm down. If need be, we dip into our savings and we pay a charter pilot from one of the General-A strips in Michigan to fly her down here. If things keep going like they’re going, the money will be nada in another month, so we might as well spend it. Let’s just wait a few days. You can’t take any leave until after you are done with your fruta class, anyway.”
“Okay. Tomorrow is Tuesday, and the stupid course ends on Friday. But here’s another idea: How about we rent a Cessna 172 or maybe a Beech Bonanza from the Glendale airport? We fly out at oh-dark-early on Saturday, we take turns on the yoke, with the other one napping, and in about four hops we fly straight to the Canton-Plymouth airport. Then we do a four- or five-hour RON and we get back here either late Sunday or early Monday. After all, I still have my civilian ticket. Your ASEL just lapsed, but who’ll be looking if we rent the plane in my name?”
Blanca smiled. “With El Infierno, renting a plane will be expensive, but hey, renting a General Aviation plane’s the perfect solution. In the morning I’ll call around and find a plane. I’ll work out all the refueling stops at little country airports—you know, private FBOs—I can call ahead or do e-mails and make sure which ones still got avgas to sell. This can work, Ian! We’ll get Linda back home.”
Major Doyle’s unit was one of the last operational units in the active component of the U.S. Air Force still equipped with F-16s. The 56th Fighter Wing had just begun a rotation to Saudi in its first overseas deployment since its TO&E began the transition from a tactical training wing to a tactical fighter wing two years before. This change was necessitated by the simultaneous downsizing of the Air Force overall, the ramping-down of the F-16 fleet, and the emergence of the pitifully few “re-scoped” F-22 squadrons. Three years earlier, for political reasons, F-22 transition training had been shifted from Luke AFB to Shaw AFB in South Carolina. As it was explained to Doyle, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee was a third-term South Carolina Democrat. Some last-minute petitions before Congress saved the 56th from extinction. It would go back to being equipped with all F-16s, with nearly all of them in operational squadrons. But the Armed Services Committee chairman made it clear: “Once F-16s are obsolete, so will be the whole 56th and its support groups.”
Doyle came on board just a few months into the shift from pilot training to an operational wing. In the first staff weenie position of his career, Doyle was assigned as the wing maintenance officer. In recent weeks his duties necessitated spending most of his time doing paperwork at either the 56th Operations Group (OG) or the MXG hangars. It all seemed rather pointless, since all but a few members of his own wing were in Saudi. He expended many hours writing maint
enance training plans and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for notional units that would be needed for a theater-wide war contingency. He realized that his unit would never get the funding for F-22 Raptors and that they were indeed doomed to eventual deactivation. His work seemed absolutely pointless.
Doyle had orders to catch up with the wing in Saudi in late November, but he dreaded doing the rotation. It would take him away from Blanca and Linda. With the current economic meltdown, he worried about their safety in his absence. Several times Ian thought out loud, “What if things get even worse?”
On one of his class breaks, Doyle used his cell phone to call one of the civilian technicians at the 56th OG headquarters who always had his finger on the pulse of the organization. The news startled Doyle. “The chief of staff of the Air Force is working up contingency plans for the emergency redeployment of almost all of the close-air-support aircraft in the Air Force inventory back to the States. Some know-nothing at the White House must have dreamed this one up! Rumor has it that our whole Wing will deploy to Hurlburt Field.”
“Florida? What for?”
“Get this: ‘riot control and looting suppression.’ They want to be able to use close-air-support planes.”
Doyle was flabbergasted. “What kinda bad weed they been smokin’ at the White House? Use C-A-S planes against rioters? The collateral damage would be hideous!”
Doyle paid little attention to what was presented in the class for the rest of the day. His mind was racing.
When he got home, he found Blanca in tears. She ran to Ian’s arms, sobbing. “Commercial flights are all still grounded. I spent the whole day on the expletivo phone and the expletivo Internet. I tried and tried to find a rental plane. I called as far away as Chandler, Laveen, Sun City. No go. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is doing any more rentals. They say too many planes are getting stolen on ‘no-return’ flights. One of the managers said to me that they’re getting told, like, ‘You can keep my security deposit, but you have to send somebody to pick the plane up, in Montana.’”
“How many planes are getting stolen?”
“Before they cut off the rentals, like 80 percent. Some charter pilots were also getting hijacked, so they also stopped doing any charters, too. So then I started calling FBOs and the general aviation airports up in Michigan. It’s the same thing up there. I can’t find a charter outfit to fly her down, not for any sum of money. What are we going to do?”
Ian thought for a moment, then said, “Don’t worry. My dad has several guns. He can handle any rioters that come down their block.”
On Friday, just after Ian got home from his class, they got a call from one of his parents’ neighbors in Plymouth, Michigan. Though she lived just across the street from the house, she was calling from Iowa. Sobbing, she said to Doyle, “Your dad shot two of the gang that were trying to kick in my front door. He saved my life, Ian. I am so thankful.” There was a long pause, and then she went on, “I don’t know how to say this, Ian. After your dad started shooting, they got really mad, and they surrounded your dad’s house and used those Molotov things, and they burned it down—right down to the basement. Nobody got out of the house.” She sobbed again, and then said, “Your daughter was in there. I’m so, so sorry!”
The next few days were very difficult for the Doyles. Ian took two days of emergency leave. Though they were grieving deeply, they still had current events on their minds. Over the weekend, the television news showed more and more American cities descending into chaos.
10
Initiative
“If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants.”
—William Penn, founder and first governor of Pennsylvania
Radcliff, Kentucky
November, the First Year
As the frequency of gunfire and police car sirens in Radcliff increased, Sheila decided that it was time to relocate. With her husband dead, there was nothing to keep them there. Consulting with her grandmother, Sheila ruled out moving back to Louisiana, which was even more chaotic than Kentucky. Sheila mentioned Bradfordsville, Kentucky, a small town that they had seen just once. It was a one-hour-and-twenty-minute drive east of Radcliff. “Do you remember it? It was way off the interstates, and there was an old store building for lease there.”
“We have enough gas to get there?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, but not enough to drive back here if it doesn’t work out.”
Emily said softly, “Then let’s pray.”
They bowed their heads and prayed for ten minutes. Then they looked up at each other and smiled.
“You feel a conviction?” Sheila asked.
“Oui, tout à fait. Indeed I do.”
They called Tyree into the room and started packing the car immediately.
The drive to Bradfordsville was stressful. Tyree nervously held the shotgun all the way there.
They encountered two roadblocks, both manned by sheriff’s deputies. At the first, just outside Hodgenville, a brief radio call was made to check their license plate number. Sheila heard the deputy mention, “It’s just two women and a kid.” After a few anxious minutes of waiting, they were waved through.
The second roadblock was just west of Bradfordsville. This was strategically placed on a low bridge west of High View Drive, on State Highway 337. It consisted of six large trucks and truck trailers in a staggered formation, intended to slow the traffic to a slow, serpentine crawl. It was manned by a uniformed sheriff’s deputy and two private citizens who were wearing jeans and baseball caps. All three held identical rifles that Sheila didn’t recognize, but from their protruding magazines she knew that they were automatic or semiautomatic.
The deputy who approached Sheila’s car window asked suspiciously, “What is your business here?”
“I’m going to see the owner of a commercial building that I saw was up for lease.”
“Which one?”
“There wasn’t a sign. There was an old building next to it, as I recall, the Superior Food Market.”
“Well, they’re both vacant now,” the deputy grumbled.
“I intend to open a store in that smaller building, Lord willing.”
The deputy nodded and remarked, “Well, somebody oughtta get a store going again here or there’ll be folk starving.” After a beat he added, “It takes a lots of guts to open a business in times like these. You just keep yourself safe. You have any trouble, just ask for me, Deputy Dustin Hodges, okay?”
Sheila nodded and smiled.
Deputy Hodges gave a sweep of his hand and said, “God bless you, ma’am.”
As they proceeded to slowly drive through the remainder of the roadblock’s sharp S-turns, Emily quoted one of her favorite sayings, from the play A Streetcar Named Desire: “ ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’”
The old store building was on the main street running through Bradfordsville. It was sandwiched between the defunct Superior Foods and a gas station, also closed. At the gas station, a large hand-painted sign across the boarded front door proclaimed: “NO GAS.”
Sheila got out and examined the building. It was of the old false-front style and looked to have been built in the 1920s or even earlier. Peering through the dusty windows, Sheila could see a small sales floor ringed by a semicircle of glass cabinets. Behind was a doorway leading to a back room. There appeared to be an apartment upstairs.
A small hand-penned sign taped inside the window read: “For Sale or Lease, Contact Hollan Combs,” and gave an area code 270 phone number.
Sheila pulled out her notepad. On the inside of the front cover she saw something that her late mother had penned the year before she died of uterine cancer:
“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.”
—PROVERBS 22:3
Sheila jotted down the name and phone number on a blank page.
She told Emily and Tyree to wait in the car. Then she strode toward the pay phone booth at the gas station.
Tyree protested: “Mom, the phones aren’t workin’. Not even the cell phone.”
“I know, I know.”
Thankfully, the plastic phone book holder still held a local phone book. Listed under C she found: “Combs H, 200 S. 6th Street, Brdfsvl.”
The house was just two blocks away. Again leaving her son and grandmother in the car, Sheila knocked on the door of a 1960s-style house. A weathered sign read: “Combs Soils Lab.”
The man who answered the door was in his seventies, gaunt, with thick black plastic-framed glasses. He carried a stubby Dan Wesson .357 revolver in an inside-the-waistband holster. He asked, “Can I hep you?”
“My name is Sheila Randall. I would like to lease that store building and apartment above it—next to the gas station. You own it, right?”
Combs seemed hesitant, “Well, there is water working here in town—it’s all gravity from a big spring up by the Taylor County line—but no power, and I don’t even know what to charge in rent these days.”
“I propose five dollars a month.”
The old man laughed and slapped the side of his thigh. “You gotta be joking. Five dollars won’t even buy you a piece of penny candy.”
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