The Coming Storm: Liberators Part 13

Dustin dismounted and gave Joshua a hug. Dustin said, "Sorry that I didn't bring my pickup, but we're still quite short on gas. One of you must be Megan." Introductions lasted the full twenty-minute walk to Dustin's house, as the horse was led by her reins. Dustin was pleased to hear that Joshua was married, and delighted to meet Megan, Malorie, and the boys. As they pushed the deer carts down the main street, Dustin explained that Bradfordsville was a simple farm town with just three hundred residents. It had been founded in 1777 by the Kentucky Longhunters as they established forts on the Rolling Fork River.

Dustin lived in a small house on an oversize lot at the west end of town. Even before they reached his house, Dustin mentioned that a young widow had just arrived in town and opened up a store selling vegetable seeds. "Her name is Sheila Randall. A very gutsy gal, if you ask me, to open up a store in the middle of all this chaos." From the tone of his voice, Malorie and Megan both immediately recognized that Dustin might have Sheila in mind for marriage.

Dustin's 1940s-vintage house was only eight hundred square feet, so clearly there was not enough room for Joshua's five-member party to "camp in" comfortably for more than a couple of nights, and "camping out" in the yard was precluded because the property's large backyard had recently been converted into a one-third-acre horse corral. The corral was surrounded by three strands of yellow "hot wire" nylon fabric tape. Oddly, this fence was electrified by a Parmak solar fence charger that sat inside Dustin's south-facing living room window. (The fence charger, he said, was now precious and almost irreplaceable, so he couldn't risk leaving it outside and having it stolen.) The constant "tick-tick-tick" sound of the charger took some time to get used to. And the presence of the charger and the electric fence required a lot of time to explain to Jean and Leo, with repeated "look, but don't touch" warnings. Naturally, the boys were fascinated by both the fence charger and the horse.

Dustin said that he had bought the horse, tack, fences, posts, and fence charger just as the Crunch was setting in. He explained, "I knew my life savings was about to melt away into oblivion, so I sank it all in the horse. She, along with all of her horsey accessories, cost me thirty-eight thousand dollars in cash, thirty ounces of silver in one-ounce silver rounds, and six hundred rounds of nine-milly. In retrospect, I'd say I got a good deal. And, since part of the deal was in the form of tangibles, I knew that the seller wouldn't get caught holding a bag of cash that would soon buy exactly squat. Oh, and the bonus is that I bought her already bred, so I should have a foal out of her in July."

With no other destination in mind-at least for the foreseeable future-Joshua asked about finding a house to rent. Dustin mentioned that there was a vacant house just two doors down. The elderly man who had lived there had died in January, from a diabetic coma for lack of insulin. The nearby vacant house was just one of three in town where there were no relatives living nearby, and currently there was no way to contact them. The town council had "emergency deputized" a local retired soils scientist to rent out the vacant houses and put the collected rents (denominated in pre-1965 silver coinage) in a special escrow box in the city hall's vault, once a month, under the oversight of the city treasurer, acting as a "Guardian for the Property and Best Interest of Missing Heirs."

While the courts would surely have great trouble sorting all of this out later, it provided badly needed s.p.a.ce for "relatives from the big city" (Joshua and his little group were not the only recent arrivals), and would keep every garden plot in town fully utilized. They soon learned that there were also already plans to rip up many of the lawns in town and turn them into vegetable gardens in the coming weeks. For now, most of the residents of Bradfordsville were living on feed corn, venison, and alfalfa sprouts.

The eighteen-hundred-square-foot house on West Central Avenue was perfect for their needs, since it had a large, well-developed garden plot, three bedrooms, and a working fireplace insert that could burn either wood or coal. The house's oil-fired heater still had two-thirds of a full tank, which would get them through to spring, when they would have to get busy cutting and hauling firewood. Utilities were not an issue. The water was gravity-fed city water (currently at no charge), and neither the electricity nor the phone was working. The rent was set at two dollars per month in pre-1965 silver coin.

They moved their scant possessions into the house two days later. They were pleased to see that the owner had loved books, so there was plenty for them to read-except that Jean and Leo would have to plunge into books that were quite advanced for their age. The house was fully furnished, right down to linens and tableware. They all considered the availability of the house an act of divine providence.

Joshua was soon hired as a deputized roadblock guard, for twenty-five cents per day in silver coin. Malorie and Megan split a forty-hour job, doing records writing and filing for the Sheriff's Department's new substation in Bradfordsville's overbuilt storm shelter and community services building. The pay for their shared job was $1.50 per week.

Megan and Malorie met Sheila Randall in her spa.r.s.ely stocked two-story general store, which had SEED LADY painted on the front windows. Her store seemed to be the only business that had been able to fully adapt to the rapidly changing marketplace. Instead of cobbling together multipliers for prices in the now almost completely destroyed U.S. dollar, she priced all of her merchandise directly in pre-1965 silver coin. The only mathematical calculation came into play when someone wanted to pay in one-ounce (or fractional) .999 fine silver trade coins or bars, or in gold.

Sheila had exotic good looks and wavy black hair, which she attributed to her Creole ancestry. Although she could pa.s.s for white, her son was much darker skinned and much more obviously African-American. Megan asked Dustin if this would prove difficult for her, as a young widow in a rural southern small town, but her store had been an immediate success. With the economy in tatters, people desperately wanted to trade. And her starting inventory-countless thousands of seeds in small paper packets-was quite sought after. She had the right business mind-set, in the right place (a secure small town), at the right time. And she had her son standing by with a shotgun to back her up.

Megan and Malorie both became good friends of Sheila, in part because they all spoke French. They spent many hours chatting in French and relished comparing the peculiar differences between Canadian French and Louisiana Creole French.

It wasn't long before Dustin was rea.s.signed as a homicide and missing persons investigator. This proved to be a frustrating and largely fruitless job. With the power grid and Internet down, he had no access to databases such as NCIC, driver's licenses, and motor vehicle registration. Being thrown back to nineteenth-century technology made it very difficult for Dustin to make headway, and he had a mountain of open case files.

27.

LA MAIN DE FER DANS UN GANT DE VELOURS.

Part of your diversification strategy should be to have a farm or ranch somewhere far off the beaten track but which you can get to reasonably quickly and easily. Think of it as an insurance policy. . . . Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.

-Barton Biggs, in Wealth, War and Wisdom The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia-the Second Year The two years that followed the onset of the Crunch were fairly quiet. Everyone at the ranch got into a routine and stuck to it. Although there was some bartering with their neighbors, all other commerce essentially stopped. There was no point in wasting fuel to drive all the way to Bella Coola, because the few stores that were open had run out of merchandise and were reduced to bartering used goods, local produce (mostly from greenhouses), and locally caught fish.

After an initial die-off of 12 percent over the first winter, the population of British Columbia stabilized at 3.8 million. Most of the deaths resulted from chronic health conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, and COPD. The suicide rate also jumped dramatically, as the threat of starvation loomed large for city dwellers. But actual deaths from starvation were fairly uncommon. Most British Columbians were able to revert to a self-sufficient lifestyle.

Greenhouses all over the country were quickly transitioned from growing flowers and decorative plants to growing vegetables. Windows from abandoned buildings were sought after for use in cold frames and greenhouses, as millions of Canadians sought to start gardening "under gla.s.s." Many farmers transitioned from monoculture to vegetable truck farming. Most of this work was labor-intensive, given the shortage of fuel. Refugees from the big cities provided much of the requisite labor, and quasi-feudal systems quickly developed.

The wave of property crimes committed by drug addicts, alcoholics, and the welfare cla.s.s was manageable by authorities in rural western Canada, as long as the hydro power grid stayed up, so that burglar alarm systems still functioned and radio and phone communications would allow prompt dispatching of police. There was the gnawing fear that fuel and lubricants would run out before transnational commerce was restored. If that happened, then the collapse would become total-just as it had in Quebec and in most of the United States.

The world was a very different place, once the United States collapsed into chaos and its nuclear umbrella was suddenly missing.

The Chinese spent the first few years after the Crunch consolidating their position and gearing up for what would be a sequence of strategic national invasions. After quickly seizing Taiwan, they blockaded j.a.pan, intending to gradually starve it into submission. Meanwhile, they used container ships converted into troop ships to invade Africa, starting with a foothold in Kenya and Tanzania. But first, on the absurd pretext of countering a concocted "terrorist plot," they used fifteen parachute-deployed medium-alt.i.tude neutron bombs in South Africa. These small neutron-optimized fusion bombs were dropped decisively: one on the capital city of Pretoria and almost simultaneous strikes on the key troop garrisons and air bases at Bloemfontein, Thaba Tshwane, Johannesburg, Durban, Kimberley, and Port Elizabeth. Then they followed up with successive neutron bomb strikes on Ladysmith, Langebaanweg, Lohatla, Makhado, Oudtshoorn, Overberg, Pietersburg, and Youngsfield. The PLA planners were so ploddingly methodical that these last eight bombs were dropped in alphabetical order, two per day, over the four following days.

Then, after their landings in east Africa, they began a systematic three-year campaign. This was nothing less than wholesale genocide, sweeping west and south across Africa, with conventional airstrikes, drone strikes, artillery, and ma.s.sed mechanized infantry. It soon became obvious that they wanted to simply wipe out the inhabitants and that they were only there to plunder Africa's mineral wealth. The Chinese had brought with them their own miners, truck drivers, and locomotive crews. The sound of approaching Z-10 and Z-19 attack helicopters became dreaded throughout the African continent. Their fleet of drones was also feared. Their Yilong drone was a clone of the U.S. Predator UAV and the Xianglong was a clone of the U.S. Global Hawk.

Meanwhile, Indonesia took over Malaysia in an anschluss, and then proceeded to invade East Timor, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and northern Australia. There were many other wars that ignited globally, as long-held grudges and turf battles erupted, once Uncle Sam was no longer able to intervene.

Bradfordsville, Kentucky-July, the Second Year While the eastern seaboard was still in the throes of a devastating influenza pandemic that caused huge loss of life, Dustin Hodges was called to the scene of a car fire and apparent homicide on Mannsville Road. Inside a torched 2009 Mercedes E350 sedan with no license plates, they found the charred remains of a man. By his dental work he appeared to be at least forty years old, and possibly as old as sixty. He wore eyegla.s.ses. He could have been shot, but with the body so badly burned, it was hard to tell. (There were no bones with bullet marks, but most of the rib cage had been burned away, so it was hard to determine.) Inside the car, the only useful evidence he could find was an XD-40 pistol magazine near the body.

Outside the car, there were wrappers and other signs that several a.s.sorted boxes of food had been repackaged and hauled away. There was also a large footlocker containing more than two thousand driver's licenses and pa.s.sports. Most of these were for Atlanta, Georgia, residents, although there were seventeen other states represented, as well as a few foreign pa.s.sports. The majority of the IDs belonged to either college-age or elderly people. The coroner told Dustin that this would be consistent with influenza victims, since the highest number of deaths would be either in old people with weakened immune systems, or in young people who had suffered cytokine storm over-reactions to the flu.

Dustin concluded that the driver was most likely a medical professional from Georgia who was driving west for some unknown reason and either ran out of fuel or had engine trouble, and then was waylaid by local bandits. Why he would be carrying such a large collection of IDs was a mystery.

With no communications available, and Atlanta in ashes, this case was baffling. The trunk was eventually dubbed "The Jonestown Footlocker" by the county sheriff, who remembered news accounts of a trunk filled with nine hundred pa.s.sports, following the Jonestown, Guyana, murder and ma.s.s suicide incident in 1978. The trunk was placed in the Bradfordsville evidence room and largely forgotten.

Resistance to the provisional government grew slowly. At first, people were just happy to hear that grid power would be restored to Kentucky and southern Ohio, and that refineries would soon be operating. Then people started hearing stories of widespread corruption, incompetence, wholesale larceny, rapes, and other acts of savagery by out-of-control foreign "guest" troops. There were also dozens of cases of people who went "missing" in the dark of night.

Dustin, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie started to make plans for resistance in the region even before the decrees banning most firearms were issued by the ProvGov. Since Bradfordsville was relatively close to Fort Knox, they realized that they would have to be very cautious. They thought that covert sabotage would be the most effective use of their time, with only moderate risk.

Joshua started out by building a hidden compartment in his rental house to hold all of their guns and ammunition. This wall cache was put in the plumbing wall between the kitchen and bathroom, so that anyone searching with a metal detector would a.s.sume that it was plumbing pipes that were causing false returns. Then he helped Dustin build a similar cache in his house.

Realizing that their former positions with the NSA might give them a high profile with the ProvGov's nascent Gestapo, Megan and Joshua asked Dustin if he could somehow help them create fake IDs. Dustin spent several evenings looking through the mysterious Jonestown Footlocker. He ended up finding three Georgia driver's licenses that were good facial matches for Megan, Malorie, and Joshua. Megan would be Stacy t.i.tus, age twenty-five; Malorie would be Carrie Lynn Peters, age twenty-three, and Joshua would be Joseph Kwok, age twenty-four. (Joshua thought this was ideal, since Kwok was a fairly common surname in both Korea and China.) The ages on the false IDs were all too young, the body weights were all too high, and the eye color for Megan and the hair color for Malorie were both mismatches. But since the twenty-first century was the era of rapidly changing weight and hair color, and tinted contact lenses, those discrepancies could all be explained away.

In the same search, Dustin also found an ID that would be a good match for himself, if he grew a beard. The crucial thing was facial features, and for those, he had found quite good matches. As long as they memorized the details on their fake driver's licenses, they could get past at least cursory ID checks, such as roadblocks.

Because the IDs in the footlocker had never been cataloged, it would not be noticed that the four driver's licenses were missing. Since they were already known in Bradfordsville by their real names, Dustin suggested that they keep their false IDs hidden, just in case of any contingency.

Western Canada-February, the Third Year Soon after the French arrived in each province, a decree went out that banned most firearms. Western Canada felt the impact of the Ottawa government's edicts much later than the eastern provinces. In their first few guns raids in Vancouver and Fort St. John, the RCMP took six officer casualties and netted just eight guns. So the RCMP suspended any future raids in British Columbia "for fear of officer safety."

The RCMP's failure to enforce the UN's gun ban made the UNPROFOR commanders furious. Despite some threats and posturing, they did nothing. They recognized that they needed the cooperation of the RCMP to successfully occupy western Canada, and that cooperation was marginal, at best. Although they had access to the same gun registration records, UNPROFOR didn't even attempt to go door-to-door, searching for guns. They preferred to make proclamations and to send out notices. These public notices threatened the citizenry with long prison sentences, deportation, and even the death penalty for noncompliance.

The Canadian government had attempted to create a universal long-gun registry when the Firearms Act became law on December 5, 1995. However, it took until 1998 to develop a system to issue licenses and require buyers to register long guns. As originally enacted, by 2001 all gun owners were required to have a license and, by 2003, to register all of their rifles and shotguns. But there was ma.s.sive noncompliance and loud complaints, especially in the western provinces.

The registry's database had some huge flaws. The consensus was that the registry was unworkable, that it had no impact on crime, and that it was outrageously expensive. (The administrative costs were estimated at $2.7 billion in 2012.) With the pa.s.sage of bill C-19 in 2012 the registration scheme was abandoned, and the registry records were destroyed. So even if UNPROFOR was willing to take the casualties, they still would not have known where to find all of the guns in Canada.

The UNPROFOR occupation smothered every aspect of life in Canada. Most public meetings were banned. Any public protests were quickly broken up, and the leaders jailed. Freedom of speech and press were history. Government censors were in every newsroom. Amateur, CB, and marine band radios had to be turned in to the authorities. (After a public outcry, the marine band radio confiscation was almost immediately rescinded, for the safety of salt.w.a.ter fishermen and crabbers.) While some dutifully turned in their radios, many of those turned in were nonfunctional transceivers with burned-out finals or other electronic problems, or they were earlier-generation spares. Nearly everyone retained their good gear but kept it hidden.

UNPROFOR had underestimated the growing resistance, characterizing the resisters as "bandits," "a few scattered anti-Francophone malcontents." They also misread the mood of the populace in western Canada. The citizens at first appeared happy to see "help from France" with the arrival of fuel tankers by road in Kamloops and by sea in Vancouver. But when infantry troop ships arrived at Vancouver and Prince Rupert, pa.s.sive resistance began almost immediately. The French tried to use le gant de velours ("the velvet glove") approach at first, to cast themselves as the Nice Guys. But the pa.s.sive resistance grew and soon morphed from vehicle sabotage to sniping.

UNPROFOR was slow to react, but when it eventually did, it came down with a fist of iron. Many of the French counterinsurgency tactics dated back to their experience in Algeria in the 1950s. As resistance grew, the French tactics became more brutal, with torture of prisoners becoming commonplace. Once the serious shooting started, the velvet glove was removed from the iron fist.

The French army had been freshly emboldened by ma.s.sacring illegal aliens protesting in France, with impunity. Their Foreign Legion troops were used primarily to police Quebec, while the French-born soldiers were used in the other provinces, where English was the predominant language. These deployments both fit in with the UN's strategy of using unsympathetic troops to quell local uprisings.

28.

BRUSSELS CHARADES.

Calling it your job don't make it right, boss.

-Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke (1967) The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia-May, the Third Year The small meeting at the McGregors' house started with Phil recounting the chatter that he'd heard on the shortwave radio. In addition to Alan, Claire, Ray, and Phil, there was also Stan Leaman, a twenty-three-year-old bachelor from an adjoining ranch. Stan was a descendant of one of the earliest settlers of the region. Most of Stan's siblings had moved to Canada's oil sands region, following opportunities with the petroleum boom. So Stan had to hire laborers to help him operate his raw-milk dairy farm.

Stan rode up to the McGregor ranch house on his big gelding one afternoon and said to Alan, "If you're planning something to fight back against these UN clowns, then count me in."

The five of them formed an independent resistance cell that would later be known as Team Robinson. They chose the name in memory of the FOB in Afghanistan where Ray and Phil had first met each other. Their first formal meeting was in May, just after news came to them of some ma.s.s arrests in Edmonton. Stan arrived wearing his usual green-and-black-checkered flannel jacket. After Stan had joined them in the living room, Phil adopted a businesslike tone and said, "We obviously need to do something when UNPROFOR arrives in British Columbia. But even before then, we need to train, organize-and of course cross-level equipment and ammunition. We need to cache a lot of gear. Not only will they be searching houses, but they're also going to lock down the towns tight, with checkpoints. So we need to gather intelligence, take stock of what we have available, and pre-position some gear so that we can use it to our best advantage.

"The vast unpopulated expanses in this part of British Columbia will give us a few advantages. It will be a huge area for UNPROFOR to control and patrol. Their forces will necessarily be spread thin. The muskeg regions are 'no go' country for nearly all of their vehicles. With our opponents on foot, we'll be fairly evenly matched, despite their firepower, communications, and night vision gear. And when we do engage them, the response time for them to receive any backup will be lengthy. That will give us time to beat feet, so that they'll have great difficulty in tracking us down."

Stan asked, "So what are you proposing?"

"I think that we can manage a few operations inside city limits-mostly very carefully targeted demolition and sabotage. Out in the boonies, we'll probably be doing ambushes on remote stretches of road, and perhaps engaging isolated detachments. In cold country like this, simply burning down their barracks in winter months will be quite effective-both logistically and to push down their morale.

"The UNPROFOR units will likely be moving in from the east via Highway 1, and by rail. Interdiction of these routes would be possible but likely limited to delaying actions by irregular forces; the prairies are awfully wide open. Any force with decent air superiority or armor will prevail conventionally. Once the French arrive to occupy the west, things will get more sporting. Securing the highways and rail lines through the Rockies and the coastal ranges will be much more difficult than pushing across prairie. Our country here is challenging terrain to operate in summer, and winter makes conventional operations extremely difficult.

"There are three main routes that they can come west on: south through Crowsnest Pa.s.s, in the center-west of Calgary on Highway 1, and farther northwest of Edmonton on the Yellowhead Highway."

Stan raised his hand and declared, "My family has a Mini-14, a SMLE .303 that was shortened, and a Browning A-Bolt, in .30-06 with a four-to-twelve-power variable scope. None of them have ever been registered. I don't even have a possession and acquisition license."

Ray laughed and said: "No PAL, but you're a pal of mine."

There were some groans in response to Ray's pun, and then he asked, "Ammo?"

Stan glanced upward and then said, "I've got about two hundred rounds for each gun. With the bolt actions, that's probably enough. But for the Ruger, laying down semiautomatic fire, that might only be enough for one lengthy firefight."

Phil nodded and said, "I can help you out with some 5.56 ammo for your Mini-14. I suppose I can spare at least three hundred rounds. But after our first few engagements, I have a feeling that 5.56 ammo won't be a problem, if we do our job right."

Stan chuckled, and said, "Yeah, I suppose that once they stop breathing, they cease to have any need for the ammunition in their pouches."

"Precisely."

Ray raised his hand and asked, "What about OPSEC?"

Phil c.o.c.ked his head and shot back, "Ours, or theirs?"

"Ours."

Alan chimed in and said, "I've heard Ray talk about military operational security a few times over the years. It seems to me that our best OPSEC protection is absolutely no talk whatsoever about any of our activities or even of the existence of the cell to anyone, even if we know they'd be sympathetic. Leaderless resistance is most effective and impenetrable when the cells keep totally anonymous, and all of the members outwardly carry on with very mundane daily lives."

Claire asked, "Could we, or should we, expand our cell?"

Phil answered, "No, not unless the tactical situation on the ground dictates it. For now, I can't foresee fielding anything more than three or four people at a time for small raids, emplacing IEDs, and some sniping hara.s.sment. More people will just mean a larger signature, more chances of getting spotted, and more chances of a slipup or betrayal. And any group larger than three or four people in a vehicle or multiple vehicles convoying has 'resistance profile' written all over it. We want to operate in ways that don't attract suspicion."

Alan said firmly, "Agreed."

Claire asked, "How long do you think it'll take the resistance to drive them out of Canada?"

Alan answered, "It all depends on how quickly resistance builds-and a lot of that depends on the public perception of their tyranny. Perhaps as long as three, four, or five years."

"Nah. They're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys," Stan retorted.

Claire giggled, remembering that phrase from an episode of The Simpsons.

Phil turned to the couch, where Ray and Alan were seated and asked, "What about the RCMP?"

Alan replied, "I've been thinking a lot about that. Back in the east, the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada-the GRC-are nearly all quislings. Out here, we're policed by the RCMP's E Division, which covers all of BC except Vancouver. In E Division they're mostly good guys, but they have a reputation as rowdies who play by their own set of rules. The bottom line is that I predict that in a few months we'll be able to divide the RCMP in the western provinces into four categories: "Category one will be all the RCMP officers who quit in disgust-but probably citing some fict.i.tious ailment or some family crisis. They'll dutifully turn in their weapons, body armor, uniforms, and radios, and go home, feeling content that they 'did the right thing.' That may be a fairly sizable number. Perhaps forty percent of the force, at least in BC, Alberta, and up in the Yukon.

"Category two will be your real hard-core guys who wait for the right moment to either: a, abscond with as many weapons and as much body armor, ammo, and a.s.sorted gear as possible, and head for the hills and play Maquisards; or b, turn their weapons on the UNPROFOR while still in uniform, timing it so they can take several of the French b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with them, before they get gunned down. But I think that this category will be very small-and nearly all of them will be unmarried RCMP officers, maybe one or two percent.

"Then there's category three, who will just go along with the program, by kidding themselves that they still represent a legitimate government, even if it means rounding up fellow Canadian citizens and putting them into forced labor. I'm afraid that might be as much as one-third of the force in the cities, and probably a smaller percentage out in the woods. It's almost always the freedom lovers who ask for the rural a.s.signments.

"Lastly, there is category four. Those are the cops that are secretly wanting to resist, but who are blocked mentally from doing so, and always finding excuses that 'it's too soon,' or somehow intend to do subtle sabotage to the system, without getting caught. You know, like the old 'Hitler's Barber' comedy shtick."

"The what?" Stan asked.

"An old stand-up comedy routine by Woody Allen, from the 1960s. He played the part of Friedrich Schmeed, barber to Hitler and his general staff. After the war, he justifies his actions, claiming, 'Oh, but don't you see that I was always plotting against Der Fhrer, in my own small way. Once, toward the end of the war, I did contemplate loosening the Fhrer's neck-napkin and allowing some tiny hairs to get down his back, but at the last minute my nerve failed me.'"

29.

UN ESSAIM.

Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks?

-Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose), Resistance Leaflet 3, 1942 The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia-June, the Third Year UNPROFOR swarmed into Canada's western provinces simultaneously from three directions: from British Columbia's western seaports, by road across the U.S. border, and by road from Ontario. Once they had control of the highways, they took over airports, seaports, and railroads. Because the rioting and looting had been less widespread than in the U.S., and the power grids suffered only limited interruption, reestablishing commerce went fairly quickly. The key ingredients were liquid fuels-gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, and propane-all of which had been disrupted by the Crunch.

UNPROFOR's strategy for western Canada could be summed up in the phrase: Control the Roads. Checkpoints, manned by mixed UN and RCMP contingents, were set up on all highways.

The parliament met in a marathon emergency session in response to the global financial crisis. By means of some back-channel maneuvering and building a fearmongering coalition, the new Canadian Le Gouvernement du Peuple ("People's Government," or LGP) took power. They promised to "restore law and order to the streets," and to "create order and fairness to the markets." The new prime minister was Pierre Menard, a strongly pro-UN socialist/collectivist and dyed-in-the-wool statist. Even before trucks began rolling in with foodstuffs, the LGP took advantage of the stable power grid in most of Canada and launched Progressive Voice of Canada (a.k.a Progressive Voix du Canada or PVC), operating on the old CBC transmitters and using their old studios. Annoyingly, more than half of the broadcasts were in French. And even more annoying, the broadcasts were pablum propaganda: promising the world, and sprinkled with charming human interest stories about how the benevolent LGP was making everyone's lives beautiful. The truly laughable part of PVC was that it featured a lot of the same newscasters and radio show hosts who had been on CBC before the Crunch. Now they were dutifully parroting the LGP party line.

Alan McGregor said dryly, "Well, before I suspected they were a bunch of Bolsheviks, but now they've really come out of the closet, haven't they?"

Not to be outdone, Stan said, "The thing about listening to PVC is that it gives me the uncontrollable urge to go dig up my own PVC." (Stan still had his banned Mini-14 buried in a watertight length of eight-inch-diameter PVC water pipe, beneath his house.) The one-dollar bill of the new LGP currency featured a portrait of an obscure 1950s French-Canadian socialist UN delegate with a distinctively round "moon" face. Because the old Canadian one-dollar coins had a picture of a swimming loon, and had been nicknamed the Looney, and then the bimetallic replacement one-dollar coin was nicknamed the Tooney, it was only natural that the new bill would be called the Mooney.