The Retreat Read online

  The General interjected, “Mitch, they want to see us dying in the woods, they think we are dying in the woods and they are right, we are dying in the woods.”

  Angus growled from the corner, “C’mon, Mitch, we need to give the people some hope. Duncan and I can take one of these forts out, the Chinese soldier’s discipline is shit, no latrines, no mess halls, nothing. I’m embarrassed for them; they are a disgrace to the profession of soldiering. A slingshot and some napalm would burn their little fence down in an afternoon; we could have a barbeque. They are so lazy they are not even hauling water or setting up purification systems.”

  Mitch was hovering on every word Angus spoke probably because he had rarely ever heard Angus speak and certainly never directly to him. Mitch swung his head around to Melanie who had swung her head around to look at Mitch at the same time.

  “Jinx!” Melanie exclaimed.

  “Double jinx!” Mitch replied.

  Duncan interjected, “Do you two need to retire to your suite?”

  Melanie stood up, walked over to Angus, put her hands on his ears and pulled him towards her and planted a big kiss right on Angus’ lips. Angus stuttered and multiple “Humpfs” kept pouring out of him. Melanie took Angus by the hand and sat him down and then pulled a chair up and sat in front of him while still holding his hand.

  “Now, Angus,” Melanie said suggestively, “I need you to look at me and I want you to tell me everything you know about how the Army uses water.”

  Angus was mesmerized and the General piped up, “What specifically do you want to know, Melanie?”

  Angus’ eyes cleared when he turned to the General and said, “General, you don’t know shit about water, you just turn on the shower and expect hot water to come out and sit your ass in there as long as you want and until you’re good and clean. You get your fancy basin of water for your morning toilette and in the evening, you get your glass of scotch with a few ice cubes and your little pitcher of water to pussy up your booze. You have a less than zero clue how much work a legion of PFCs have to do to get you that water, General.”

  “OK, Angus, over here,” Melanie said. “I need you to focus and tell me everything there is to know about water in the US Military and I don’t want to have to strip to get your attention.”

  “OK, Mel, but the damn General better keep it buttoned,” Angus said. “Every overseas deployment starts with the same thing and that is a lecture that starts with DO NOT DRINK THE WATER. The second thing they do is make you watch a slide show about venereal disease with pictures of people’s privates that caught the clap. When you get to a forward base, the first thing you learn is the SOP for water; you get two minutes of water tops for a shower and you don’t touch any tap or water can that does not have “Potable” stamped on it. They limit the water for everyone because the base has an Army water purification system. I can show you a picture of one if you want.” One popped up on the big screen as if by magic. “The purifiers are some kind of reverse osmosis membrane thing that can only process so much water into the holding tanks. If the level gets too low then they meter the showers down to one minute; the officers can pull the chain as many times as they want. You always want to shower first thing in the morning because the base uses less water during the night and the holding tank gets closer to full. The senior NCO mess always had its own water truck that got lost and was accidentally disabled behind the club. The worst thing is getting all jacked up from a patrol and getting back after dinner because there was never any water. There is almost two inches of paper in the SOP for water alone and procedures for filling a jerry can. The Army takes water more seriously than just about anything else. On a middle base all the water was trucked in and pumped into the holding tanks. You only got one-minute showers. At a forward base you occasionally got jerry cans of water flown in or you had to boil it. All the damn mess cooks ever did was boil water, 24/7, that’s why the food was always ass at a forward position. If the cook was any good then he’d steal the preserves from the 3 in 1s to make GI soda to take the boiled taste out of it. If you were in the field, then you had to toss water purification tablets into your canteen; that’s why GIs all carry Gatorade powder with them to cover the horse piss taste of the purification tablets. The reason officers don’t know shit about water is because some PFC kept filing their canteens with the good stuff and not the horse piss. I don’t drink scotch with water because I am a man and I also didn’t want to ruin good scotch with shitty water.”

  “OK, Angus,” Melanie pleaded with a pouty mouth, “why was the US Army so crazy about their water sources?”

  “Because you were likely to catch an upper GI tract infection, Mel. I’m not talking a little Mexico case of the runs, I’m talking the revenge of Montezuma’s revenge, explosion feces, Mel. I got a case in Nam from stupidly getting ice in my scotch at a bar over there; I still don’t put ice in my scotch from the memory. You literally just stayed on the crapper and slept on the crapper because when it blew there was no holding it back; I thought the toilet was going to break it got hit so hard. I slept on a crapper for three days while the docs pumped IVs into me along with antibiotics. It was the only time, other than when I was a baby, that I crapped my pants. You could not eat anything or it came out the front of you. A couple of guys died from it. The trouble with the explosive runs is you get dehydrated and need more water but your stomach cramps up and you toss it back up again. No IV, no water, no water, you die. The doc said I had a mild case, the dude in the crapper next to me had been on it for two weeks. It’s nasty, Mel.”

  “Great, Angus,” Melanie pleaded with her pretty please smile, “we are at the finish line. Why else do you think the US Army is so militant about its water supply?”

  Angus thought for a few seconds then smacked himself in the forehead with an open palm. “Because someone could fuck with it.”

  Melanie turned to Mitch and started, “Can you…”

  “Already on the way,” Mitch replied.

  “And…” Melanie started

  “Yes,” Mitch answered.

  “What about..?” Melanie said.

  “Almost here,” Mitch answered.

  Duncan interrupted, “Can you two please stop that and clue us in? It is already bad enough that you two have the biggest brains at the Retreat but it seems like you are mind melding two brains together right now to make one ginormous one.”

  Angus turned to Duncan and said, “They’re going to fuck with the Chinese water.”

  Chapter 13

  The Retreat spent a week compounding almost 1,000 pounds of their deadly concoction in the Retreat bunker. They used the bunker because they had kept one of the labs functional and needed a clean space with separate ventilation. The concoction was packaged in wrapped plastic and the team looked like a bunch of cocaine dealers. Each package was carefully weighed and the weight was marked on each package. They went with Melanie’s permutations and had ten small packages for every four medium ones to every one large one. Melanie prepared a small table to calculate water volume and the number of each numbered packages to add to the tank. She sent Duncan and Angus to a different water tower to see if they could use it. The squads were assembled and each squad had double the dose they needed based on their guestimates of water capacity from previous population lists the General provided and Mikey’s engineer’s take off. They followed the prepper and soldier maxim of two is one and one is none. If any of the teams ran into difficulties or their loads were ruined, they could rely on adjacent squads having the needed backup doses. The Retreat did not know the disposition of Chinese forces in Wyoming or Montana but the General had contacts with the resistance forces in those areas and they would help infiltrate the strike squads into those areas. The Retreat command squad sat on eggshells for two weeks as the squads moved into position.

  The Chinese troops stationed at the Retreat began searching all the houses for the six missing soldiers. They had been going door to door for a week searching every nook and cranny f
or their missing comrades. The single family that had made it from Seattle to their survival bunker freaked out and activated their defense systems. Mikey had built it to their exact standards and the area around their house had a grid of sensors under the landscaping. When a squad of soldiers began searching carefully, one of the soldiers stepped on a grid sensor and a .30 caliber machine gun popped out of their chicken coop and opened fire, turning the soldier to mist. Other Chinese soldiers opened fire and began maneuvering toward the coop, returning fire. Guns popped out all over the house and killed every soldier the sensors detected. The remaining soldiers hunkered down and the two Strykers that were part of the command screamed over to the house. The Strykers both had MK 44 Bushmaster II cannons and they went to work destroying the coop, barn and most of the house. The house burned to the ground and it was only then that the Chinese troops found the hidden bunker. By a freak of bad luck for the Seattle family, one of the only floor sections exposed was the steel entry door into the bunker. The Chinese Retreat Commander had his troops place C4 explosives around the opening and the door blew up in the air. The family in the bunker was hauled out and immediately hung from the rafters of the church. All the remaining homes were carefully searched and the Beverly Hills bunker access doors were blown open. The Seattle family soon had three other families join them hanging in the church, the remaining bunkers were empty. The Chinese commander returned to the Retreat, thought for a minute and soon his remaining soldiers were tearing up the floors of the Welcome Center looking for doors in the floor. The trouble with soundproof and vibration proof bunkers is that the advantage works both ways. The Retreat command staff did not know the bunker had been discovered until the steel entry door blew up. Alarms sounded in the bunker that there was a breach.

  “Oh crap,” Duncan yelled. “We need to DiDi now, everyone get to the escape tunnel. MOVE!”

  Mitch grabbed his daughter and his son ran to his Uncle Angus. The great thing about preppers is they are always ready to bug out. Mitch was the last man to the escape door and handed his daughter through to Melanie. Mikey and Duncan were covering him but the bunker wasn’t through yet. It was a top tier biohazard lab and there was an airlock between the doors and the Chinese soldiers needed more C4 to open the second door which had automatically locked.

  “We need to flood the bunker, Duncan!” Mitch cried as he made it to the escape door.

  “The button is over there, Mitch,” Duncan said. “I’ll hit it and run through the door and you and Mikey lock it.”

  “You won’t make it, Duncan,” Mitch cried. “My family is in that tunnel! I’m way faster than you and you two are strong enough to close the door.”

  Mikey stepped up and said, “I’ll hit the button, just close the door.”

  “Mikey, you are as slow as a pregnant woman. We’ll all die if you try this,” Mitch said.

  “Just shut the door, you imbeciles. I am not going to hit that button over there, I’m going to hit this one,” Mikey said while opening an access hatch that had a button installed inside the hatch. “It was very dramatic and deep right there and you two won’t EVER make fun of me again, will you?”

  “Better hit it, Mikey, we don’t want them fishing for bodies down there,” Duncan said.

  Mikey hit the button and twelve hydraulic doors opened in the bottom of the reflecting pool and the bunker flooded in seconds. The bunker had been built with a fail-safe if any biohazard could potentially escape. The reflecting pools were not just to look at, skate on in the winter or swim in during the summer. They were the last resort containment option.

  It did not matter: the Chinese soldiers started dying the next day. 22,000 of the 30,000 Chinese soldiers died in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana over the next three days. The only soldiers that escaped death were the farm security soldiers who were guarding properties that were on individual wells. The remaining 8,000 hopped in their Stykers and formed up with other units to form a brigade. They cobbled together a command from spare parts and formed a convoy to return to their lines in Washington.

  The General was watching the screen in the Welcome Center. “They are bugging out, Mitch. We should hit them at Hells Canyon again.”

  Mitch looked at the screen and saw the convoy blips as their location was radioed to the Retreat.

  “Don’t bother, General,” Mitch said.

  “They’ll be back,” the General insisted.

  “No, they won’t, General,” Mitch insisted as he kept watching the column advance to Lewiston. “Pull all our people back, NOW!” Mitch said into the microphone. “Ten-mile standoff from the Lewiston road, FALL BACK.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Mitch? I am in command here,” the General said while looking for his radio. “We can’t let them get away!”

  “They are not getting away, General, trust me,” Mitch said.

  “Please explain, Mitch,” the General insisted.

  “It’s a trap, General,” Mitch said.

  Ten minutes later the General felt a rumble in his toes and in his chest. He had never seen it personally but the feeling had been vividly described to soldiers for decades. Soon the rumble in his chest turned into a quake.

  “They just took out their own column with B-52s,” the General stated. “They would have hit our teams if you didn’t evacuate them, Mitch. How did you know?”

  “They were moving too slow and the column drove on an inefficient route. The Chinese do not tolerate failure and must have suspected we would take out the column and suspected where we would do it. They were going to kill the failure troops and they figured they would take as many of us with them as possible. They too have read Sun Tzu; it is their book after all.”

  “You know they will be back, Mitch,” the General said.

  “No they won’t,” Mitch insisted.

  “How?” the General asked.

  “I don’t know but I’m going to find out,” Mitch declared.

  “How do we get the Chinese to want to leave?” the General asked.

  “They won’t leave until their theoretical debt is cleared, they figure their mission is futile and their government recalls them or somebody forces them to leave,” Mitch said.

  “Who can force the Chinese to leave, Mitch? NATO?” the General asked.

  Mitch put up his hand, put his head up in his deep-thinking mode and said, “Sstaap!” After five minutes a big smile broke out on his face. “It’s the golden rule, General.”

  “You are going to buy them off, Mitch? I know you are rich but you’re not that rich,” the General said.

  “I am going to do some trading, General,” Mitch declared and called the command group together and gave them directions. They all look confused at Mitch’s request but started moving the pieces around and putting his plan into motion.

  Chapter 14

  The squads were returning to the Retreat from all over the State and a few from other states. The General’s liaison troops to the Retreat also volunteered to help in the hope that they could return to the Retreat permanently after the final engagement. The Retreat population had been reduced by 25% through the two large engagements and there was room for future expansion. The squads were sent to all the extra special caches to retrieve supplies and to hump bricks. 27-pound bricks of gold. Each brick had 400 ounces of gold in it. Mikey went to work pumping out the Welcome Center bunker, putting the water back into the reflecting pools. The Chinese could not see what was in the bunker because the command group, the only ones who knew of its existence, was that the bunker was the home of Fort Olympus. $10 billion of gold pre-bankruptcy equaled over 20,000 bricks of gold that had to be physically carried to its destination. The bricks were not going to the Chinese to bribe them, it was going to Canada. It would take the entire Retreat population to move it.

  The General’s command staff left the Retreat immediately, their task was to make contact with any Northern Idaho redoubts and camps and get the Retreat people safe passage through their territory and act as pathfinders.
Many of the Northern Idaho groups fled to Canada when the Chinese pushed north into their territory. Canada was a neutral country during the conflict and while the border was closed to Americans, it was a vast, mostly undefended border and the people of Northern Idaho had secret paths and points of entry to cross the border. The Canadian authorities turned a blind eye to the border crossings and the Canadians had good relationships with many of the Idaho groups.

  Duncan, Angus, Mitch, Melanie and Devin followed the next day, along with the Olympus crew. Devin was very excited to be “operational” and had, over the course of his time at the Retreat, shed 75 pounds and was lean and in the best shape of his life. Devin had still not passed his rifle proficiency test despite hours of private instruction. Devin had closely followed the Retreat’s doctor’s orders on exercise and diet. The dentist was agape when on Devin’s second visit he dropped an entire gold bar on the reception desk and told the dentistry office he was paying in advance to make sure he received the best dental care possible without any hassles. Nobody showed Devin how to brush or floss after that and all the reports were complimentary on what a great job he was doing with his oral care.

  Four days later they finally made it to the Canadian border. The Olympus crew was in good shape but did not have the stamina of the Command Group. The group was met at the border by Canadian Immigration and Customs officials where the group had to shed their firearms and ammunition. Canada would be very accommodating to their needs but suppressed firearms were a bridge too far. All Angus said was “Humpf” when he turned over his firearms to some of the General’s men. “Humpf” had many different meanings and the tone and inflection that Angus used clearly conveyed his state of mind. There was no mystery that Angus was skeptical and thought Mitch was crazy. The ten Retreat members were driven in three vehicles to the nearest Customs and Immigration Center where they were met and interviewed by agents. Melanie took care of the interview.