Geographically distinct units were formed from the Northwest Militia, as planned,
late in the April of the fifth year. To avoid confusion amongst the local citizenry
that they protected, they designated those at the original retreat as “Todd
Gray’s Company” and those at Kevin Lendel’s house as “Michael
Nelson’s Company.” The responsibility for patrolling was divided
along a line east-west between the retreats.
Todd Gray’s Company was to patrol the northern half of the sector, while
Michael Nelson’s Company patrolled the southern half. Separate CB channels
were assigned to each Company for locals to use to contact either Company.
On the 5th of May, Mary was in the garden plot transplanting some young tomato
plants that had been started in the greenhouse a few weeks earlier. As she
was methodically digging holes for each of the plants, she heard a strange
engine noise in the distance. Just moments after she first heard the noise,
she was astonished to look up and see two light aircraft approaching from the
south. She dropped her trowel, snatched up her AR-15, and ran to the house.
By the time she was in the house, the Mallory Sonalerts were wailing, and everyone
at the house was at their “stand-to” positions, scanning their
assigned sectors of fire.
“Does anybody have any idea where those planes came from?” Mary asked.
Sitting at the C.Q. desk, Jeff shrugged his shoulders, and reached over to turn
off the “panic button”, silencing the piercing alarm.
The engine noise was clearly louder now. From the LP/OP, Terry called in on
the TA-1: “They’re pusher prop jobs, twin seat, tandem style. It’s
hard to tell, but it looks like there’s just one pilot in each. They’re
definitely circling us. Everybody stay put.” The planes circled the house
a second time, just a hundred yards above the ground.
From the front of the house, Todd declared: “Hey, wait a minute, it looks
like they’re getting ready to land. Yep, they are landing down on the
county road.” The two planes landed in rapid succession on the straight
stretch of county road below the house. Todd was surprised by how short a distance
it took for the planes to land and come to a full stop. The planes looked identical,
except for their color. One was painted dark green. The other was tan. He heard
their engines roar up in tempo as the planes turned and taxied back to the
front gate. The planes came to a stop at the front gate, and their engines
shut down.
Both pilots lifted their canopies and took off their headphones, almost in
unison. Two figures, one tall and one short, hopped out of the planes, wearing
BDUs and tan boots.
Todd shouted loud enough for everyone at the house to hear: “They are
painted drab, but those sure don’t look military. Have any of you heard
of anyone in the area that owns an ultralight?” There was no reply. Todd
pondered for a moment. “Hey, you know, Dan told me that Ian Doyle was
in an ultralight club.
I sure wish Fong was still here. He’s probably seen pictures of Ian’s
plane. He said that it was a zippy little thing, and I think he said that it
was a two-seater.”
“Who is this Ian fellow?,” Rose asked.
Mary answered, “An old college buddy of Todd and Dan’s. He has
a wife and daughter. That might be him in one of those planes down on the road.”
Ten minutes later, after a cautious squad-sized approach by the bounding overwatch
method, Todd and Ian Doyle were sharing hugs. “Wow! Long time no see.
What brings you here?”
“It’s a long story, Todd. Suffice it to say that we left town in
a hurry when a very large number of muy malo hombres took over. It was muy
peligroso there. So we did some Van-dammage--just to whittle them down,
you understand--and then we took off. It took a few inquiries in Bovill, but
we found your place here easily enough.”
Todd took a long look at the plane behind Doyle, staring at just below the
wing root, where it was stenciled EXPERIMENTAL. He said insistently, “You
can tell me the whole story later. First tell me about these ultralights. They
are really a sight to behold.”
Ian turned to caress the fuselage of the flat forest green-painted plane behind
him. “To begin with, technically, they aren’t ultralights, although
they use a lot of the same design features. Legally, these birds are classed
as light experimentals. These birds are both Laron Star Streaks. I paid just
under $30K for mine, when I picked it up new from the factory in Borger, Texas,
back in ‘98. We towed it home in it’s trailer behind our Suburban.
The Star Streak comes with a lot of standard goodies like dual controls, an
ICOM radio, electric start, electric brakes, three position half span flaps,
electric trim, and a pretty complete set of VFR instruments. I added a GPS
navigation box and active noise reduction headphones to this one. It’s
essentially a poor man’s general aviation plane, but legally it’s
a light ‘experimental’. But it’s too heavy to be classed
as an “ultralight” under the FAA regs.”
“With its enclosed canopy, it’s one of the best light experimentals
for long range flying. In fact, one guy flew a similar model Laron from London
to Beijing and wrote a book about it. As I’m sure you know, the main advantages
of ultralights and light experimentals is that they are so thrifty on gas, and
have a super short take-off roll--usually under 200 feet--and very low stall
speeds. The Star Streak only weighs about 400 pounds, empty. The other neat thing
about our Larons and most similar light experimentals and ultralights is that
they are not restricted to av-gas. In ours here, for example, you can burn any
grade of gas down to about 85 octane. If I adjusted the carb jets, I suppose
they would even burn ethanol or methanol. Luckily, I haven’t had to try
that yet.”
Doyle turned to the trim woman with an olive complexion standing beside him.
She appeared to be around 35 years old. “I’m sorry, I’m getting
ahead of myself. This is my wife Blanca. I’ve written to you about her,
but we haven’t seen each other face to face since college, so you’ve
never had a chance to meet.”
The attractive woman in BDUs extended her hand, and Todd shook it firmly. Gray
said quietly, “Encantado.” She replied in a soft accent, “A
pleasure finally meeting you, Meester Gray.”
“As you probably recall from my e-mail, I met Blanca when I was stationed
down in Hondo,” Doyle continued. “That was back in my ‘Terry
and the Pirates’ days, when I was a lieutenant--not too long out of transition
training. She was a civilian working in flight ops at Tegucigalpa. Blanca was
already a qualified single engine pilot when I met her. Talk about love at first
sight, eh conchita?” Blanca smiled and blushed, nodding her chin
to her shoulder.
Gesturing to the other plane, Ian said, “We swapped for Blanca’s
Laron just after the stock market tanked. I got it from an old fart civilian
who was in the Phoenix Metro ultralight club. He bought this one as a kit.
He said that it took him almost two years to build it in his spare time. He
finished building it in ‘99. It had very low hours clocked on the engine.
His was stored in the same style enclosed trailer that we had for mine. I traded
him my Sten gun, a suppressor with nomex cover, a whole bunch of magazines,
and 1,000 rounds of nine millimeter ball for it. Fair enough swap, I suppose,
since unregistered and suppressed submachineguns don’t grow on trees.
We could both see the handwriting on the wall by then. He knew what I needed,
and I knew what he needed: I needed some more transportation, and he needed
some more firepower. I asked him why he wasn’t planning to bail out of
Phoenix. He said that his wife refused to budge an inch. They had their whole
life wrapped up in their house. Since he was stuck there, he didn’t need
the plane, but he certainly needed a serious self-defense gun.”
Doyle stepped toward the back of the fuselage, deftly ducking under the wing,
and went on: “The Star Streaks cruise at just over 120 miles an hour
at 80 percent power, which is pretty fast for a light experimental. Of course,
that seems like crawling when you are used to wearing an F-16, but I like ‘em.
The cockpit layout is even similar to a Falcon. Not exactly fly-by-wire controls,
though. This model uses a 85 horse Hirth F-30 engine. It’s a great little
plant. It just hums along and sips gas--only about five gallons an hour at
80% power. Both of these planes are identical except for the propellers. Mine
uses a four blade composite, but the prop on Blanca’s is the older composite
three blade. The Hirth is a powerful little engine. It will make the Larons
climb at 2,500 feet per minute when it is in normal configuration with just
one man on board, but of course a lot slower the way we have them loaded down
right now. The planes have a rated useful load of 500 pounds. I’m afraid
that we exceeded that limit when we took off from Prescott. Between the heavy
load and the high elevation of the airport, our takeoff distances were outrageously
long--at least, that is, for a light experimental. But luckily, we had a long
straight stretch of road to take off from.”
Blanca looked around anxiously. “Ees there anywhere where we can put
theeese birds where they whon’t get stolen?”
Mary answered, “We’ll put them both in the Andersen’s big
hay barn, just down the road. It’s a nice dry barn. The wings should
hopefully fit through the front. It was left open on that side to let the big
New Holland harvester in. It’s a three-sided affair. The farm is deserted,
and the barn is almost empty now. They gave us permission to use the place.
Don’t worry--when the planes are pushed to the back of the barn, no one
will see them there. And, as further insurance, it’s just within line
of sight of our LP/OP, up on the hill.”
“Ell-Pee-Oh-Pee?”, Blanca asked, quizzically.
“Sorry, Blanca. I’m afraid that we are used to talking in ‘acronese’ around
here, and not the Air Force acronym dialect you’re probably used to. LP/OP
is a ground pounder acronym for listening post/observation post.” Pointing
to the nearby hill, Mary explained, “Basically it’s a glorified hole
in the ground. If you look very closely, you can see it up on the hill there.
It has a good view of the area. It’s for observation in daylight, and for
listening at night.”
Moving the planes into the barn took only a few minutes. They were able to
taxi the planes under power to within 20 feet of the barn. From there, they
were pushed in by hand. Going in, the planes’ 30 foot long wingspans
cleared the entrance with just a foot to spare on each side. As they were pushing
the first plane in, Mary asked, “How many gas cans have you got in there,
and how far can you fly without refueling?”
Doyle pointed through the canopy at the rear seat area, and cited, “Originally,
the Star Streaks only had a range of around 320 miles at 80% power. The main
tank is 14 and-a-half gallons. But I added some big bladder tanks to both planes.
They aren’t connected directly to the primary fuel system. I cheated
and installed a couple of little Black and Decker Jackrabbit hand pumps along
side the front seats, with extra long hoses. To transfer fuel from the bladder
to the main tank, you just put the Jackrabbit in your lap and crank away. The
bladder tanks extend our range to about 480 miles without landing to refuel,
when we are at max takeoff weight. If we were in a light configuration, they
could maybe even go 550 miles.”
Ian’s plane came to a rest with the tip of its nose less than a foot
from the rear wall of the barn. He inched past the nose and walked around to
the other side of the plane, talking as he walked. “They are both quite
a bit lighter right now, since we have less gas and we had to barter some of
our stuff for fuel.” He tapped on the Plexiglas with his index finger
and said, “I have these five gallon gas cans strapped into the back seats
of both birds, but they are nearly empty, too. Aside from some clothes, sleeping
bags, tools, and aeronautical charts; most of the weight on board is fuel,
oil, guns, ammo, water, and MREs. You know, just the essentials in life. At
present we’re down to less than 8 gallons of fuel between the two planes...”
Mary interjected, “Don’t worry about that. We still have over four
hundred gallons of stabilized unleaded premium in the tank here. It will only
be good for another year or two, so we might as well use it up. I think that
it’s 92 octane, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Terry--she’s
our logistics honcho. But she’s up at the LP/OP right now.”
After they had pushed the second plane in, Todd declared, “Don’t
worry about all your gear, we’ll come down with the pickup truck later
this afternoon and take it up to the house.”
Before they left the planes, Doyle used a socket wrench to remove the nose
wheels from both planes, and buried them under some loose hay near the front
of the big barn. “They won’t be going far without these,” he
said. As they walked out of the barn, Ian slung his suppressed MAC-10 over
his shoulder. Blanca did likewise with a stainless steel folding-stock Mini-14
GB. Todd was disappointed to see that they didn’t carry any extra magazines.
He made a mental note to correct that glaring deficiency.
As they walked, Blanca was bemused at the way the militia members walked at
5 yard intervals. “Why are you walking so far apart?,” she asked
with a laugh.
“Force of habit,” Mary explained. “In case of an ambush, you
are at much greater risk if you are bunched together.”
They chatted amiably as they hiked back to the Gray’s house. Once they
were inside, Rose served up an early lunch of raw carrots, apple slices spread
with reconstituted peanut butter, and freshly baked bread. It was over lunch
that Ian and Blanca started to recount their story. Mary set a TRC-500 to the “VOX” setting,
so that Terry Layton, who was still up at the LP/OP, didn’t feel left
out.
Munching on some bread, Ian began, “The 56th Fighter Wing had just started
a rotation to Saudi. It was just two years before the Crash that we switched
back from a tactical training wing to a tactical fighter wing. I came on board
just a few months into the transition. Anyway, when all the trouble started,
since I was the wing maintenance officer, I was stuck back at Luke, catching
up on paperwork. I was also taking a idiotic mandatory ‘Diversity, Sensitivity,
and Sexual Harassment’ class. The frickin’ class lasted a whole
week. I had orders to catch up with the wing in late November. But then, when
the riots got going in earnest, they planned an emergency redeployment of virtually
all of the close air support aircraft in the Air Force inventory back to the
States. Some weenie at the White House must have dreamed that one up. Our wing
was going to deploy to Hurlburt Field, down in Florida. Criminy! Could you
imagine F-16s and A-10s versus rioters? Talk about over-kill! I never heard
what happened to our squadrons after that. I was too busy with problems of
my own--like finding drinking water for Blanca and myself.”
“And your daughter?,” Mary asked.
Doyle’s face clouded with emotion. Stiffening, he replied, “Linda
didn’t make it, ma’am. She died five years ago. She was in Detroit,
doing her annual six week long ‘Grandmom and Grandpop’ visit with
my folks. It was the first time that she was old enough to go on a commercial
plane by herself. Blanca wanted to stay home to relax, do some pastels, and
a bit of surfing the Internet. We were home-schooling her, so Linda wasn’t
on a normal school year schedule. Blanca and Linda liked to go up to Michigan
in the Fall. They get some nice Fall colors up there.”
Ian paused and looked at the ground. “By the time we realized the magnitude
of the situation, most of the flights had been canceled, and the few that were
still flying were booked solid. In retrospect, what I should have done was
played “you bet your bars” and commandeered a D-model Falcon to
zip up there to get her. Instead, I took the conservative route and just hoped
that the riots wouldn’t last long or spread outside the downtown area
of Detroit. I also figured that if worse came to worse, my dad’s gun
collection could handle any rioters that came down their block. I was wrong.
I got a call from one of their close neighbors who managed to make it out of
Detroit alive. She said that looters got really pissed when my dad shot some
of them. They torched my dad’s house. Killed them all. I still feel like
such a fool. I could have saved my folks and my daughter’s life.”
Blanca squeezed Ian’s hand and said softly, “Don’t do thees,
E-an. We can-no change history.”
Mary’s eyes were wet with tears. “I’m so sorry, Ian. I’m
so sorry, Blanca. ”
Doyle shook his head from side to side and muttered, “Dwelling on it
won’t do any good. In times like these, you just have to suck it up and
drive on.”
Todd said a silent prayer. Then he looked up and asked, “So what happened
to everybody at Luke?”
Doyle snapped out of his reverie and recounted, “To call it mass desertion
would be to put it mildly. The mess halls only had limited food supplies, and
we only had enough MREs on hand for short-term contingencies. I’m sure
some of the overseas air bases had better stocks, but nobody ever expected
a disruption of re-supply of food in CONUS! When it became clear that the food
wasn’t going to last long, virtually everybody started to disappear.
And when they went, they took a lot of equipment, fuel, and nearly every scrap
of food on base with them. The Base Exchange, the commissary, and the mess
halls were stripped clean. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. There wasn’t
a soul from 56th Log or 56th Medical left on base. Even the whole Support Group
basically vanished in about three days time. By the time I decided to pack
it in, Luke was a ghost town. There were only seven pilots and about 20 ground
crew guys left on the post. Most of them were young bachelors. By that point,
I was the senior ranking officer on the base, so I could do pretty much anything
I wanted. I was the de facto base commander. I just called a formation and
released the remaining personnel on base on ‘indefinite leave.’
Unfortunately, my options were pretty limited. You see, there wasn’t
a single aircraft left on the ramp, or a single military vehicle left on post.
By then, there were just a few POVs. Even the fuel trucks had disappeared.
Now you’ve got to understand that they had 217 birds on the property
books, mainly F-16 Cs and D models. Of those, they were all either out on the
Saudi Arabia rotation, or off on “emergency” flights that all mysteriously
ended up being one-way missions. At least three F-16s, and the general staff
Lear were out-and-out stolen. No flight plans were filed. The guys who took
them just figured that they could get away with it. They just taxied out at
O-dark-early and took off. And there was nobody left in the tower to say ‘boo’ about
it. Those four had been the last airworthy planes on the base. The few planes
that were left were just some stripped hangar queens.”
“After that ‘gentlemen, you are released’ speech, I spent the
rest of that day looking for fuel containers. Every gas can available had already
walked off base. The only good sized containers I could find were some hydraulic
fluid drums. But I was afraid that the fluid left in them would contaminate the
gas. So I ended up scrounging a bunch of empty 2 liter pop bottles from dumpsters
around the BX. I drove home that evening with almost 140 gallons of av gas in
the back of the Suburban. I never went back to Luke after that.
We were living off base in a rental flat-top in Buckeye. It’s basically
a retirement community. When I got home, I talked things over with Blanca.
We decided to hang tight for a few days. We packed up, but packed light. It
was like one of those life boat games--’Now if you could only take five
items, which five would they be?’ The end result was that Blanca and
I had to leave a lot behind. We spent a lot of that time listening to the radio
for reports on the rioting. Only a couple of AM stations were on the air by
then, and the news they were handing out was pretty sketchy. None of it sounded
good. They spent half the time repeating the same FEMA ‘Stay calm, remain
in your homes, order will be restored shortly’ tape. What a pile of bull.
The tape even recommend calling 911 if we saw any looting in progress. I laughed
and said, ‘Oh yes sir, will do.’ The phones had all been dead for
several days.”
“Our next-door neighbors had a police scanner. That was the best thing
for monitoring where there was trouble happening. This was at the time when Phoenix
and Tucson were burning down. Major chaos, let me tell ya. Once the looting started
spreading out into the suburbs, we agreed that it would be bad news to stay in
the Phoenix area much longer. Bright and early on a Tuesday morning, we wheeled
the Larons out of their trailers, and bolted on the wings and tails, right there
on our front lawn. It only took about fifteen minutes each to assemble and pre-flight
them, since we’d had plenty of practice before, putting my bird together
for weekend jaunts.”
“While we were loading our gear, most of the neighbors just stood there
and gawked. A few helped out with the fueling process. We handed our next-door
neighbors the keys and title to our Suburban, and the keys to the house. I told
them that anything inside was free for the taking. By then, we knew that we weren’t
ever coming back. Then we taxied off the lawn, down the driveway, and out the
court. We hung a left, throttled up, and took off from Hastings Avenue. Some
of the neighbors stood at the ends to block car traffic for us. Must have been
quite a sight for the retirees. We flew from there straight to Prescott--that’s
in northern Arizona. We planned to stay at my cousin’s place.”
“My cousin Alex was a senior salesman with J&G Sales, a big gun distributor
up in Prescott. With that job, I figured that he would be pretty well squared
away, at least in terms of guns and ammo to barter for anything he could possibly
want. Prescott is partly a resort community, and kind of a haven for gun nuts.
J&G was there, Ruger had a factory there, and there were lots of custom gun
makers, barrel makers, and stock makers. One little outfit there made elephant
guns on custom magnum Mauser actions before the Crash. Big .416 Rigbys and that
sort of thing. The last I saw of them, they were still producing some smaller
caliber long range guns in H-S Precision Kevlar-Graphite stocks. They sold them
on a barter basis. Real tack drivers.”
“Prescott is not a big town, but it took us a while to locate Alex, since
the phones were out there by that time, too. I hitched a ride from the airport,
while Blanca stayed behind to guard the planes. From talking with Alex’s
neighbors, we discovered that he had hired out as a security man for some Tucson
banking fat-cats. They had a pretty elaborate hidey hole set up just north of
Prescott. There were four families living at the compound. At first they didn’t
want to take us in. Then they saw the firepower that we had with us, and they
changed their minds. Officially, we were “security”, just like my
cousin. We had it pretty soft there, compared to most folks. We had plenty of
water, and enough food to get by. We were in no hurry to leave.”
“Things were pretty quiet there for four full years. A little local trouble,
but nothing worth mentioning. Then we started hearing about this gang of escaped
convicts and assorted riff-raff that was slowly working its way up from New Mexico.
Refugees told us that it was originally two gangs that combined into one big
super gang. They would hit a town, linger a week or two, strip it clean, and
then move on to the next one. They were like a swarm of locusts. There were over
300 of them by the time they made it up to the Prescott area. Rumor had it that
at least one of the two gangs had been doing this town-to-town hopping all the
way from south Texas. By then they were getting pretty good at it.”
“I took a recon flight in my Star Streak down to Wickenburg when they hit
there, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. They just swept through the town in
one big mass of vehicles. Many of the houses were abandoned, ‘cause folks
had heard they were coming and didn’t want to be around when they did.
Basically, they burned down any house that anyone was shooting from. Then they
went from house to house, taking anything of value. Even from the air, I could
see them dragging some women out of houses and raping them on the sidewalks.
We’re talking total scum of the Earth. It made me wish I was flying a fully
armed Fighting Falcon instead of my little Laron. I could have really kicked
some tail. These guys were absolute savages, Todd.” Doyle stopped for a
few moments, and then added, “I got shot at some when I was on that flight,
but I didn’t find any bullet holes in my bird when I got back.”
“Just three weeks ago, the gang was making their way up the Agua Fria,
and hit the little town of Mayer. About 80 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 12 miles up the road. A Navajo
kid about 13 years old, who escaped from Humboldt just after they arrived, gave
us the layout. He even volunteered to go back in to 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 serious Van-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 loud hand clap.” 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 hand-clap.
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 semi-auto 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 40 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
29 of us made it back to Prescott alive by noon. Two more guys straggled in the
next evening. Of the 31 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 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 GMC motor homes. They
were headed for Flagstaff.”
“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 take-off,
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.”
.
I asked where he purchased it, expecting the answer
to
be Amazon,
and was stunned when he said that he picked it up at Borders on State Street
in downtown Chicago. I wandered over to the store at lunchtime and, lo and
behold,
there were two copies in the the new "Mystery and Thrillers" section
right next to Ian Rankin's latest book. There were plenty of copies of Rankin's
book but only two of yours remaining. I asked the clerk if there were any
more copies available and she said that they had five that morning. Only two
left. Wow! Unfortunately, they were asking $14.95 for the book. I have a new 
(I
love this thing) so I'm planning on buying the 