Ken left $305 in cash on top of the front of the pile of grain. He composed a thank-you note to the owner of the elevator. Realizing that it made no sense for him to continue to carry his walkie-talkie since Terry’s had gone missing, he also left it as a barter payment for the owners of the grain elevator. But he first salvaged the ni-cad battery.
The temperature was 25 degrees lower than when they had left Chicago. They pressed on. It was almost unbearably cold. They took turns sleeping that night in a large open-sided hay barn located 200 yards from the nearest house. The barn was half full of hay and straw bales. It offered little protection from the wind, but they were thankful that they weren’t sleeping in the snow. They weren’t disturbed.
Just west of Lime City, Iowa, they decided to cross over Interstate 80. The freeway was deserted. To Ken, this seemed unbelievably strange, since up until a few weeks before, I-80 had been a major car and truck route.
Fife, Montana
Late October, the First Year
When the Crunch hit, Joshua Watanabe was woefully underprepared. His only stored fuel was three gallons of gasoline for his weed eater. His house was heated by propane, and the heater’s fan was useless without grid power.
He owned only one gun, a Browning A-Bolt .30-06 that he used for hunting deer and elk. The rifle was stainless steel, and it had a matching finish Nikon Monarch 4-12 adjustable magnification scope. He hadn’t bothered to buy any spare magazines for the rifle.
He had always been a “one box a year” type shooter, so as the Crunch set in, Joshua had only thirty-four rounds of .30-06 ammunition on hand. When the full implications of the Crunch became obvious, he made frantic trips to seven sporting goods stores. But he found that their inventories had already been devastated. He was able to find only three additional boxes of .30-06, and those had three different bullet weights, so he had doubts about the point of impact when using them. He bought a set of RCBS .30-06 reloading dies for $250. He was able to find 500 reloading primers (for $100), but no powder, brass, or projectiles. He also found a spare telescopic sight. It was an inexpensive 3-to-9 power scope made in China, but it was better than nothing in the event that his Nikon scope ever got broken or fogged up. Because the rifle had no iron sights, Joshua knew that if the original scope ever failed the rifle would become useless without a backup.
The sporting goods stores had hardly any guns or ammunition, but they still had a fair quantity of hunting clothes. So Joshua bought a heavy Realtree camouflage coat with a detachable hood, a set of camouflage overalls, a camouflage balaclava, and a camouflage microfleece sweater. Scouring the shelves, he also bought five rolls of rifle and bow camouflaging tape. This removable adhesive tape was intended to break up the outlines of guns or archery equipment. Since his rifle was stainless steel—with all of the metal parts looking very silvery—he felt that it was important to tone down its appearance.
Later that month, after his marriage to Kelly, Joshua’s new father-in-law gave him a pistol—a Kel-Tec PMR-30 .22 Magnum. Just a .22 rimfire, it was a pitiful stopper for men, but fine for shooting squirrels and rabbits. It also had an unusually bright muzzle flash. But at least the pistol used thirty-round magazines. The Kel-Tec came with only one spare magazine. This left Joshua wishing for half a dozen more. He decided that if he ever needed to use it for self-defense he would restrict himself to taking head shots. He practiced with it, keeping such shots in mind, aiming at just the eye area of the head on a human silhouette target. Short on ammunition, he mainly did “dry practice.” Because the firing pins of rimfire guns tend to gouge their chambers if they are dry-fired, Joshua made a habit of always inserting a piece of fired brass in the chamber before doing dry practice.
Not only was the pistol woefully underpowered, but he had only 340 rounds of .22 Magnum ammunition. Searching for more ammo for both the pistol and his rifle was his highest priority. The holster that came with the pistol was marginal. It was a generic nylon holster with a cumbersome thumbstrap. It took lots of extra practice to get used to quickly un-holstering the pistol with one hand.
Joshua’s father-in-law’s rifle was a .270 Winchester, and both Joshua’s mother-in-law and his new bride owned .243 Winchesters. The family had fewer than 200 rounds between the three rifles. Jim owned the only other handgun in the family—a Ruger Redhawk .44 Magnum with a ponderously long eight-inch barrel. It was fairly well supplied with more than 600 rounds of ammunition—a mixture of .44 Magnum and .44 Special, both of which could be fired through the gun. Joshua considered it substandard as a self-defense gun—he preferred automatics—but he was hardly in a position to criticize, since he had owned no handgun.
Joshua’s food situation was pitiful. As a bachelor, he had kept only about a twelve-day supply of food on hand, plus a couple of cases of MREs that he’d bought the year before through the base commissary with hunting trips in mind.
Joshua hadn’t filled a deer or antelope tag the year before. Without any meat in his freezer, other than two pounds of hamburger and four lamb chops, he was “behind the power curve.” He thawed and grilled that meat on his propane barbeque, fearing that there would soon be power failures. He was hoping to bag an elk or a couple of antelope before winter set in. This, he realized, would not be sport hunting. It was meat gathering, and vitally important.
The Monroes’ ranch was only two miles from the A-01 MAF. Only two weeks after the Crunch, Joshua was assigned caretaker of the facility, including its outlying silos. This assignment gave him “as needed” access to JP-4 fuel from Malmstrom, to do his sporadic roving patrols of the MAF and silos. He was encouraged to do patrols roughly four times a week, but not in any set pattern. The only vehicle at the ranch that could burn JP-4 was Jim’s Unimog. This at first seemed like a poor choice for patrolling the silos but it later proved ideal. The terrain around A-01 was mostly rolling hills. Because it had been set up for camping, the Unimog could be parked below the crest of hills so that it would be out of sight. Joshua could then stake out any of the silos. He could do so for days or even weeks at a time if need be.
There were no weapons or vehicles at Malmstrom that hadn’t already been issued. But because of his assigned security duties, Joshua was able to obtain an AN/PVS-14 night vision monocular, issued on a semipermanent hand receipt. The monocular was a third-generation (“Gen 3”) design with amazing clarity and sensitivity.
Chicago, Illinois
Two Years Before the Crunch
Just after he was promoted to assistant manager, Ken had an after-hours conversation with his boss, during which he mentioned that he objected to the foul language that had become frequent in the shop. Chet Hailey agreed, and gave Ken the authority to crack down on it. They agreed that Ken would have the say-so about behavior on the shop floor, and spent some time discussing a strategy and some new policies.
Ken waited a few days until he heard a particularly foul word that was shouted loud enough for everyone to hear. Ken shouted more loudly, “Drop your wrenches! Stand Down meeting in Chet’s office, ASAP!” This was a seldom-called meeting of everyone in the shop. Heretofore, they had been called only over safety issues.
Once everyone was in Chet’s office, Ken declared, “There is a problem in this shop with foul and profane language, and it has to stop. We are professionals here, and we need to treat each other with courtesy and respect. We also have to keep our customers, their kids, and the front office staff in mind. In the past few months the language here has gotten worse, noticeably worse. Nobody should be expected to work with that sort of language. You all know what I’m talking about, so there isn’t any need to spell it out.”