part0031

In the meantime, Rick got a phone call from the Fire Chief. He asked if he could stop by and talk to Rick. Rick said yes, but hold for a moment. Rick and Marsha quickly talked it over and figured that the Chief would be hitting them up for more money. They would listen. They invited him out for coffee late Saturday morning.

When Chief Johnson got to their house, they went out on the veranda since it was such a nice spring day. Marsha had set up a coffee service with some sweet rolls on the side. They were very surprised when Chief Matt Johnson had an entirely different agenda.

“Folks we have the equipment on order, and most of it will be here in the next month. I must tell you, while you want to remain anonymous people have figured it out, and the word has spread. Telling Mary ended any chance of being unknown.

That being said, everyone will be pretending they don’t know it’s you. You have a lot of goodwill built up around here. That is all except one fellow, and that’s what I want to talk about.”

“Who do you mean,” asked Rick?

“That Major Watkins isn’t very happy with you; it seems you asked the FBI about him.”

Rick and Marsha were both disconcerted to hear this. “Where did you hear that,” Rick questioned?

“As I said word gets around out here. One of the fellows who is employed as a farmhand at The Farm dates a local girl, he told her and it went from there. Now don’t get me wrong, that Major guy scares all of us. That is what I want to talk about.”

Rick and Marsha exchanged looks.

“Go ahead,” said Rick .

“We are concerned first with the country. Any fool can see we have gone too far down the debt path, and have over half the country on some sort of welfare. This can’t have a good end. I know it has been said for the last fifteen years, but someday it will collapse. That’s when our second fear comes into play.

It’s the Major and his announced plans to take over the area once the country collapses. You aren’t the only one who has gone to the authorities and been rebuffed. They say he has broken no laws yet, and if he does after the country is gone, it isn’t their problem. Damn fools.”

“What are you proposing, putting together your own armed force,” asked Marsha.

“That is part of the plan but only a small part. We have a small working group right now, the Sheriff, a Judge, a County Commissioner, and me.

Rick we would like you to join us.”

“We are a Disaster Planning group. If all outside help was cut off what would it take for this area to survive? We know that there are FMEA and the State Agencies with their County extensions. However, they only look at short-term problems. Like a month-long power outage. We are thinking of no power available from the outside, ever. Along with that is food, health care, and yes, local defense. ”

“We figure we need to have on hand almost a year’s worth of food for the valley. There are around nine thousand people living here. We know families will return home if they can, so it will be more like fifteen thousand, we will need to feed before crops come in. Now, this is a worse case, but that is what we are looking at.”

Marsha said, “That sounds like a lot of food.”

“It is. We have to plan for two hundred fifty pounds of flour per person. That works out to almost two thousand tons! Meat fifteen hundred tons, sugar or honey four hundred and fifty tons, salt, thirty tons, vegetables, and fruits over five thousand tons. The only problem we don’t have is water. That is based on FDA numbers.”

“Have you any idea of the costs involved,” asked Rick?

“Yeah, I have nightmares about it. The flour alone at two dollars a pound is seven and half-million dollars. Cattle at eleven hundred pounds would yield seven hundred fifteen pounds average meat. One cow would feed three people. That means five thousand head. We could buy them as weaned calves at six hundred dollars each. That would be three million dollars. You get the idea, just on food alone we figure it will take fifteen million dollars to feed everyone.

Then there is the infrastructure to support it. Also things like health care. We don’t have a Doctor or a Dentist in the valley. This looks like a seventy-five million dollar project.”

“Matt, I hope you don’t think we can pay for all this.”

“Oh no, we think we can finagle most of it with state and federal grants. We just need some help with coming up with a plan. Like we buy five thousand head of cattle, who is going to raise them, feed them, take care of veterinary issues.”

“Then we will need a slaughterhouse. We won’t want all cattle; there will be hogs, chickens, and sheep. Where will we store the grain, where we will grind the flour, bake the bread? We need someone to help develop the big picture, so we can fill in the details. We figured with your army background you could at least point us in the right direction.”

Rick got a very concerned look, “My army background?”

“You don’t think we check out everyone who lives around here?”

“Never occurred to me, I have always been a private person, and I’m a little taken aback by this.”

“No harm meant Rick, just with all these government databases it is easy to get a quick background check on anyone.”

Marsha inquired, “What do you know of Major Watkins? ”

“Well to start he never made Major, best he did was Captain in the reserves, and that looks like a political promotion. Literally a political promotion, he was a gofer for that nitwit that was our Governor ten years ago.”

“The Governor only lasted one term, but that is when Watkins got his promotion. He had joined the regular forces but was let go before he made first lieutenant. Don’t know why, but when he went over to the reserves, they took him as a first lieutenant, but it took him eight years and the Governor to get to Captain.”

From the look on Rick’s face, he was thinking hard, “I would like to talk this over with Marsha, can I let you know later?”

“Sure no real hurry, but we really want you on board.”

After Matt left Rick and Marsha just stared at each other for a while.

Finally, Rick said, “Well that was out of the left field. What do you think?”

Marsha shook herself like she was trying to get out of deep sleep.

“That certainly was a surprise. We did come here because we wanted to be in a rural area rather than urban if things went bad. If the whole community is thinking along the same lines we would have a better chance. ”

“Yes it would, and now that we have been invited in, there would be resentment and problems if we opt out and things do go to hell without us giving any aid.”

“So at this point, we really don’t have any choice,” replied Marsha thoughtfully.

I don’t think so, and actually, I think it’s a good idea,” said Rick.

He continued, “I just question if raising the funds will be as easy as they think. That is a lot of money.”

“Maybe I could help write grant proposals,” Marsha said.

“Dear, that’s a good idea. Actually, the planning part sounds attractive to me.”

“Speaking of planning what are you going to do with your plan for Major Watkins?”

“I think it’s best to go ahead. It would eliminate a big problem. Besides if he is gone maybe the Feds won’t pay as much attention to this area.”

Rick stated, “My next step is finding a Snow Goose that is for sale.”

“How will you do that?” inquired Marsha.

“I will start with good old e-bay!”

Good old e-bay didn’t have what he was looking for, but he found out there was many a site that dealt in used aircraft, there was a CG-10C Snow goose listed for sale in South Dakota by a couple of guys who had tried prospecting for gold in Alaska in some pretty rough country.

Rick opened a g-mail account, using a free Wi-Fi hotspot in Chattanooga and made contact. He was able to keep the price down to seventy thousand dollars in gold. They wanted more, but when he offered to pay in gold, the Dakota Boys jumped on it.

Using his Chattanooga identity, he contacted Carlos Alberto Cortez. He offered him five thousand dollars and expenses to drive a large box van rental truck up to South Falls and pick up the Snow Goose.

Cortez was thrilled with this opportunity. It would get him and his family home. Rick gave Cortez a package for the guys in Sioux Falls. He didn’t tell him its contents. No sense in tempting the poor guy.

The trip went off without a hitch. Carlos made the round trip in six days. He met Rick at the Mission. Rick took the truck from there. The Snow Goose was set up on a frame on wheels, so he was able to get it into the north barn at the King Creek ranch.

The barn was on the first property they had bought. There was too much traffic at the old gun club barn for his comfort .

Rick made a point of finding out what flight Carlos would be leaving on. He was waiting for the family at the airport. The little girls were cute with their small-wheeled bags in tow. Carlos had his hands full keeping them moving and in a straight line. They wanted to stop and look at everything.

Rick told Carlos how much he appreciated him making the trip and handed him an envelope.

Carlos, don’t open this until you are on the aircraft. You need to be sitting down when you read this. It is a bonus for making the trip.”

Carlos’s mind was obviously on his daughters as he just said, “Thanks.”

Rick walked away chuckling, as he thought of the look on Carlos’s face when he opened the envelope and found a cashier’s check in US dollars for one hundred thousand dollars.

This was over two year’s salary in Columbia. Carlos might not be the sharpest person on the planet, but he would figure out that maybe there was a reason that he might never want to come back to the United States. Not that he planned to anyway.

Rick would have been very surprised if he had been with Carlos when he opened the envelope. Carlos just took a look and nodded his head and put the envelope away. It was as though he had figured a few things out. He told his daughters,